Preamble

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]

Community Care (Residential Accommodation) Bill

Order for Third Reading read.

Mr. Marsha Singh: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I shall try to be as brief as possible, but first I want to apologise to you, Madam Speaker, and to hon. Members as I shall have to leave before the end of the debate due to a pressing engagement in my constituency. Although I have tried to change it, I have been unable to do so. I shall be opening a post office and I cannot get out of the engagement. I hope that you, Madam Speaker, and the House will accept my apology.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) has kindly agreed to stand in for me and I am grateful to him. However, I cannot see him in the Chamber at the moment; I just hope that he is watching the debate on a television somewhere and will turn up soon.
The Bill is not sexy; it is not controversial and it does not arouse the passions that we have recently witnessed in the House. It is nevertheless an important Bill which will ease the anxieties of older people already in residential care and the many thousands who may need such care in the future. It will enshrine in law their right to keep a proportion of their hard-earned income and savings. Indeed, it is a Bill that may even benefit right hon. and hon. Members, should the need ever arise.
I shall briefly give some background to the Bill. Although there have been rules on capital limits since the National Assistance Act 1948, the current rules came into force in April 1993 under changes introduced in the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990. The changes in means testing for residential care included rules about both income and capital. Previous limits on capital caused grave and widespread concern and it was in response to that concern that in April 1996 the capital limit was raised, following an announcement to that effect in the Budget statement on 28 November 1995. Those changes were, first, that the level of assets at which people would no longer be eligible for assistance was doubled from £8,000 to £16,000 and, secondly, that the level of capital at which they would start to make a contribution was raised from £3,000 to £10,000.
The former right hon. Member for Kensington and Chelsea, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, said:
In this Budget I shall be helping people who are earning and people who are saving. But I also want to help the people who have worked and saved all their lives. Some of them may be unfortunate enough to need care in residential or nursing homes in their old age. If they do, they may find their savings eaten away quickly to pay

for that care. Of course, that is one of the rainy days for which people save. But the balance between the state paying and the family paying must be right.

Mr. Edward Garnier: I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman at so early a stage in the debate. I am slightly confused as he referred to the former Chancellor of the Exchequer as being the right hon. Member for Kensington and Chelsea. Will he confirm that he means my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke)?

Mr. Singh: I apologise—I made a mistake.

Mr. Garnier: I was confused.

Mr. Singh: It was my confusion, not the hon. and learned Gentleman's.
As I was saying, the former Chancellor said about the balance being right:
If it is not, many prudent people will complain that they are being treated unfairly compared with those who are unable or unwilling to save at all.
To help people who have already put money aside, it was recently decided to exempt from VAT some forms of care provided in someone's own home. I now have two important further proposals.
First, I intend to exempt from tax the benefits from a range of insurance policies that provide long-term care benefits. We should encourage, not penalise, people who decide to take more responsibility for themselves.
Secondly, at present only people with assets worth less than £3,000 are not asked to make any contribution from their capital towards the costs of residential or nursing home care. People with assets worth more than £8,000 receive no financial support from the Government. When applied to care in residential and nursing homes, those limits are far too low.
From April, and sooner if practicable, we shall more than treble the lower threshold, from £3,000 to £10,000, and double the upper threshold, from £8,000 to £16,000. That means that people in residential care who have worked hard and saved will now keep more of their own money. It will give many elderly people and their families more financial security and greater peace of mind. But we also want to find more ways of helping people who are now in work or recently retired and want to plan ahead to prepare for their old age."—[Official Report, 28 November 1996; Vol. 267, c.1067.]
The next day, the then Secretary of State for Social Security, the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) said:
One of the main financial concerns facing elderly people is the prospect of needing long-term care. Providing for their needs in old age is, of course, one of the reasons why people save, but Age Concern and others have argued that the capital limits applying to people in residential and nursing care are tougher than the rules for people who stay in their own homes. They have urged us to raise the capital limits for residential and nursing care to those that apply to housing benefit.
We are going further than that. We are not just doubling the upper limit to £16,000 but more than tripling the lower limit. Under our proposals, people with up to £16,000 of assets will qualify for state help and people with capital of less than £10,000 will not be required to make any contribution from their capital towards the cost of basic residential care."—[Official Report, 29 November 1996; Vol. 267, c. 1214–15.]

Mr. David Tredinnick: I am listening to the hon. Gentleman with great interest. Will he explain how he has arrived at the new thresholds? It will be


interesting for the House to know whether the hon. Gentleman has talked to the Treasury about this matter, as there are grave financial implications.

Mr. Singh: If the hon. Gentleman had listened to what I was saying he would know that those thresholds were introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget statement in 1995 and by the Secretary of State for Social Security the day after the Budget statement. Those thresholds are not new, but existing ones that were introduced by the previous Government—the money was allocated in the 1995 Budget.

Mr. Tredinnick: The hon. Gentleman must forgive me if I did not understand him correctly. What I was getting at was whether the current Treasury team under the new Government had given its part or total blessing to the Bill. It is one thing to look at what the Conservative Government proposed, but there has been a change of Government—indeed, the hon. Gentleman is here because of that change of Government. It is germane to the debate for us to have an understanding of the hon. Gentleman's arrangement with the Treasury as, without that, the basis of the debate is undermined.

Mr. Singh: The thresholds and the capital limits were contained in that Budget statement—the finances were allocated.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Paul Boateng): Perhaps I can assist the hon. Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick). I shall be making the Government's position clear in due course, but I can say now that we have no problem with the limits.

Mr. Singh: I do not have the words to speak on the Bill as eloquently as did the then Chancellor of the Exchequer and the then Secretary of State for Social Security in the debates when the capital and income limits were introduced.
Those changes were welcomed by the whole House and they should have been implemented without any problems, but local authorities began to abuse the rules in different ways. Sefton borough council decided to disregard the limits and adopted a strict rationing regime. Dozens of people were refused assistance—dozens of people had to wait until their assets were below £1,500 before they could receive help they needed. That £1,500 was just enough to pay the funeral expenses. Dozens of people in Sefton were subjected to misery and hardship.
Help the Aged took the matter to judicial review and, to everybody's surprise, the judge upheld the actions of Sefton council.

Mr. James Gray: I think that on these occasions fair dues all round should be the case. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will also give credit to Age Concern, which also brought the judicial review to which he referred.

Mr. Singh: I shall pay due tribute to Age Concern during my speech.
The judge's decision led to widespread anxiety among older people, their families, their carers and organisations acting for them, such as Help the Aged and Age Concern. Thankfully, the Sefton judgment was overturned in the Appeal Court on 31 July 1997, but there is still a great deal of uncertainty and anxiety among older people and organisations acting for them because of the Sefton judgment.
I am reliably informed that some local authorities are telling people with less than £16,000 to go on waiting lists. Long delays in assessments are leading people to eat into their own assets—assets which were supposed to have been guaranteed by the House—and local authorities frequently refuse to backdate the funding. The process constitutes a form of Sefton by the back door, which is a disgraceful state of affairs. That is why the Bill is necessary.
It is essential that the law makes the position absolutely clear. If our previous guarantees to older people are being flouted, we must legislate. It is essential that, through the Bill, we amend the National Assistance Act 1948. I hope that the Department of Health will go further and ensure that assessment of need is separate from, and precedes, assessment of a person's financial circumstances.
I hope that the Department will ensure that local authorities do not unreasonably refuse to assess someone for community care services and residential accommodation. I hope that the Department will ensure that local authorities do not delay assessments by setting deadlines. I hope that the Department will ensure that local authorities have a duty to carry out an assessment, whether or not care and attention is otherwise available. I hope that the Department will ensure that, once a person is assessed as needing residential care, lack of resources cannot be used as a reason for refusing or delaying care.

Mr. Nicholas Soames: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and I have a great deal of sympathy with the points that he is making. Does he agree that we are talking about a two-sided contract? It is not just that the local authorities should, as he rightly says, speedily undertake those assessments so that old people are able to move to another care regime; local authorities should pay nursing homes and other institutions promptly for the services that they have contracted from them. Some councils do not. I am dealing with such a case in my constituency, where a nursing home has persistently been kept waiting by a county council under a contract arrangement, to the great disadvantage of the people who live there.

Mr. Singh: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I hope that the Government Bill that will set out a statutory right to interest on the late payment of bills will help. If there is a contract, the local authority involved should pay on time. I am sure that the Bill to which I have referred will involve local authorities.
I said in my introduction that this is not a Bill which excites passions, but I believe it should. We should be passionate about the rights of older people. We should be passionate about the fact that older people are being ripped off. We should be passionate also if older people are being denied the care to which they are entitled. Older people should be able to keep the assets that they worked hard to secure and for which they saved hard. Every right hon. and hon. Member may one day be grateful for that passion.
Finally, I thank Age Concern, Help the Aged and the Department of Health for their help and advice and I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for his encouragement. I commend the Bill to the House.

Mr. Richard Page: I congratulate the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh) on bringing the Bill before the House. There is a skill in choosing Bills that are available to private Members—ones that will not cause excitement and delay. It is wise to choose a Bill that can speedily pass through the House and take its place on the statute book, especially if it will provide the support and help that is intended.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned passion. I believe that the Bill raises a passionate issue and one for which we should fight. If we cannot help the elderly, who can we help?

Mr. Singh: I said in my introduction that the Bill has not excited passion and that has not aroused the passions that we have witnessed recently in the House. I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that it should excite passion because we should be passionate about the rights of older people.

Mr. Page: There is no dissension between us. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the Bill fully deserves the support of the whole House. Hon. Members on both sides who have supported the Bill have given us the opportunity to clarify the responsibilities of local authorities towards people who are in need of residential care.
I find it rather sad that local authorities should abuse weaker members of society, but I suppose that Parliament is here to ensure that such people are protected.

Mr. Tony Baldry: We should not talk of local authorities as a whole but of Sefton, which at the time had no overall political party control although it had a number of Liberal councillors. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is appalling that on a day when the House will be debating several significant Bills there is not one member of the Liberal party present in the Chamber?

Mr. Page: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. Let us concentrate on the matters that are before us and not on who is here and who is not.

Mr. Page: I entirely agree, Mr. Martin. I was about to chide my hon. Friend by saying that it is not my responsibility to run the Liberal party, tempting though that might be.

Mr. Singh: Sefton council has become notorious for what it did, but let us not forget that other local authorities have been doing a Sefton by the back door.

Mr. Page: That is a matter on which I shall touch lightly when I make some further remarks. I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Baldry) to the extent that Sefton is not alone; there are one or two

other councils that are playing the same game. I am sure that if my hon. Friend reads the details that are in front of him this will all become relatively clear.
It is right that people who have a reasonable amount of capital should be asked to make a contribution towards the cost of their care. I do not think that everyone should lie back and rely on the state, saying, "Give me the necessary money." That view was taken by the previous Parliament and I am glad that it is sustained in the Bill.

Mr. Soames: I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend as he moves into the full power of his oratory. I am sure that he agrees that the Bill is important and that the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh), who I am sure is not moving too far from his place, deserves great credit for introducing it. However, there are many Conservative Members—[Interruption.] I think that of one of my hon. Friends' pacemakers is going off. Let us hope that it is nothing serious. A by-election would be inconvenient for my party at the moment.
There are many on the Conservative Benches who feel that the Bill should have been introduced as a Government Bill. Is it not odd that the Government, when in opposition, were extremely earnest on this issue but have chosen the long, detailed and difficult way of introducing legislation—although extremely competently presented—through a private Member's Bill when the matter could have been dealt with perfectly well in last year's Finance Bill?

Mr. Page: For the record, it was not my pacemaker that was going off. Mine is under control.
I can only agree with my hon. Friend. The Bill deals with an issue which should have been dealt with on the statute book earlier. The private Member's Bill procedure is a well-known route but it is subject to the hazards and vagaries of the House, as one or two other hon. Members have discovered on producing private Members' Bills. I am glad that this Bill will not be thwarted by other hon. Members, but will go through the House and on to the statute book. I hope that that process will be as quick as possible. If I may proceed with my speech without the support of my colleagues intervening every 30 seconds we might make some progress.
As I have said, I believe it right that members of the public should make a contribution towards their upkeep as they become older and if they have some resources. It is entirely wrong that some local authorities have cynically attempted to create and exploit the technical language—the hon. Member for Bradford, West referred to this briefly—in sections 21 and 22 of the National Assistance Act 1948 to avoid meeting their justifiable responsibilities. They have chosen to do so until elderly people's savings have been reduced to less than £1,500.
As the hon. Member said, it was the intention of the previous Government, approved by Parliament, that once an individual's capital fell below £16,000, and subject to the level of their income, local authorities should begin to contribute towards the cost of their accommodation and that once that individual's capital had fallen to £10,000, local authorities should meet the full cost. The Bill would ensure that there is no legal loophole that allows local authorities that want to take advantage of the elderly to disregard those requirements.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: My hon. Friend says that the Bill would ensure that there will be


no legal loophole. That is one of the things that we have the opportunity to test in the Minister's presence on Third Reading. There is a serious question whether the Bill does not still leave a legal loophole; I understand that if the local authority thinks a person is not in need of care and attention because he or she still has enough money—between £16,000 and £1,500—to continue to pay for himself or herself at home or in some other form of care, the Bill will not bite. Has my hon. Friend had an opportunity to consider that question?

Mr. Page: My right hon. and learned Friend makes a valuable point. I hope that the Minister will clarify that issue when he replies. Accommodation today is so expensive that, frankly, it would be only a matter of months before the local authority's decision to take up, instead of avoid, its responsibilities would be thrust upon it. This issue needs to be clarified, not only to ensure that local authorities behave in future but for the peace of mind of elderly people.
When they are young and active, as you are Mr. Deputy Speaker, people have confidence, but when they become elderly and frail they need help and support. They do not need the worry that they could suddenly be in desperate need of support from local authorities or the various bodies that exist to help.
Hon. Members will be familiar with local authorities' claim that they are underfunded. The director of my local social services authority, Hertfordshire county council, wrote to me last October saying that demand from elderly people for services was rising in line with the growth in their number. He was afraid that the county council budget could not cope with the demand. As a result, basic services such as shopping and cleaning help have been withdrawn—despite a huge increase in Hertfordshire's council tax this year of some 10 per cent: it is a Lib-Lab-run authority—so that the authority can concentrate on those who, unfortunately, are housebound or unable to feed and wash themselves.
I am deluged by letters from elderly people who need help and support. Their letters are exceedingly moving and worrying. It is difficult to reconcile the huge increase in Hertfordshire's council tax and the huge cut in its services with the fact that London seems to have survived swingeing cuts. The fact that there might be an election, of course, is pure coincidence, and I must not let anybody draw any inferences from the lack of services in Hertfordshire.

Mr. Tredinnick: I am listening with interest to my hon. Friend. What specific concerns have been expressed by elderly constituents? Their main concern is covered by the Bill, but it would be interesting to know whether he has deduced anything in particular from his correspondence.

Mr. Page: My hon. Friend tempts me down paths that are peripheral to the Bill. I make the point that the concerns expressed by the elderly in my constituency result from the cut in services and the lack of financial support. I raise this point because it is germane to the Bill. If we cannot get the financing right, we will not be able to look after people properly. I do not want people to suffer cuts in services through lack of support and finance if that can possibly be avoided.
The list of concerns raised by the elderly is long and serious, but if I had to choose one item that is causing most concern it is the lack of home help for people who are unable to look after themselves but want to stay in their own home. If we do not tackle that properly there will be greater pressure on residential homes as more and more people say, "I want to move into a residential home because I can't cope in my own home." That is why the lack of support for home help is most serious and damaging.

Mr. Gray: Does my hon. Friend agree that, often, the shortage of social services funding for home care and home help comes about not so much through a lack of central Government funding or a lack of funding from local taxpayers as through incompetent handling of the funds available to the social services department? He will be interested to hear that Wiltshire county council—a Lib-Lab council—spends some £70 to £80 a week more putting people in long-term care homes run by the county council as an ideological preference to the perfectly excellent private homes throughout the county. Does he agree that that is a disgrace and that the net effect is precisely the shortfall in home care that he describes?

Mr. Page: I do not want to chide my hon. Friend, but he is trying to lead me into areas about which I have no knowledge and expertise. I have no idea about the way in which his council operates. I have no idea about its policies—just as I have no responsibility for the Liberal Democrats.
I return to the point that I was making. If we do not get our finances correct, greater pressures will be placed on residential homes, and that will mean even greater pressure on the taxpayer. That is why I come back to the sensible, lower-cost support of home help, which has enabled people to stay in their own homes, in their own community, which, ultimately, reduces the bill to the taxpayer. It is a win-win situation. I suggest that my hon. Friend goes back to his council and suggests that this is a way in which costs could be reduced to the greater enjoyment of elderly people.
I shall not go on about the shortcomings of councils—Hertfordshire or any other. I produced the example of Hertfordshire because I know that the arguments of local authorities that cannot meet their full obligations to the elderly because of a lack of financial resources is one with which Ministers in the present Government will become more familiar in the years ahead.
I cannot believe that any local authority can seriously maintain that the capital of an individual in its area should fall below £1,500 before it feels legally bound to offer assistance to meet the costs of residential accommodation.
The hon. Member for Bradford, West referred to the cost of a funeral. I am not an expert on the cost of funerals in Merseyside, but I studied some figures produced by the National Association of Funeral Directors. In parts of the country, a standard burial costs more than £2,000. If the Bill did not address the issue of savings, everybody in Merseyside in this situation would have to be cremated, as the choice of a burial would be beyond them.
The conduct of Sefton metropolitan borough council in trying to insist that people in need of residential care should have their savings reduced to this minute level merits outright public condemnation. It puts its emphasis


on its policy—draining the resources of vulnerable people—above its duty of care. Moreover, it does so on the basis of the argument that possessing capital of more than £1,500 and less than £16,000 means that people might have the means to secure the care and attention that they require.
If that really is the substance of the council's position, it means that it places its accounting position ahead of its legal obligation to help elderly and vulnerable people. Morally, that is a shallow, repugnant argument. Legally, as has been said, the Appeal Court judgment last October showed that that argument is morally and legally bankrupt. The council's defence—that its actions were solely driven by its lack of financial resources and that it had no desire to challenge the law or attack people's savings; that line was taken by the chairman of the social services committee last April—is just not credible. As soon as the judgment of the Court of Appeal went against it, Sefton council's assistant director for older people, Mr. Alan Lewis, told The Independent on 23 October that
years of financial stringency have paid off and after reviewing our financial circumstances we found we are now able to meet the provisions affecting this particular group of people".
Halfway through this financial year there was money to meet the needs for residential care and accommodation that had previously been impossible to find.
The only redeeming feature of the council's response was that it had become willing to recompense the people who had been wrongly forced to pay the costs of residential accommodation. They will be paid back with interest. The hon. Member for Bradford, West mentioned the statutory right to interest. I am not sure that it is a panacea for all late payment, but I am glad that some extra compensation is to be paid to those people. I am not certain how many are involved. The Independent quoted a figure of 70; The Guardian said that 100 people are affected. However many, if it is more than zero, it is one person too many.
Whatever view the council took of the level of funding provided by the previous or the present Government for the community care programme, the effect of its policy decision was to place its assessment of its financial resources ahead of the assessment of the elderly vulnerable people who needed help to secure appropriate residential accommodation. The elderly in Sefton and one or two other places were being held to ransom in an argument between local government and central Government over the funding levels that the latter should provide. I hope that such a case will never happen again. I am happy to support the Bill.

Mr. Edward Garnier: I am most grateful to be called today, not least because it gives me an opportunity to talk about a subject that has concerned me for some little while and which I discussed with the Under-Secretary of State for Health when we debated, under the auspices of the Hansard Society, the question of the law and Parliament. I am brought to that subject because the Bill has its genesis in the case of the Crown v. Sefton metropolitan borough council.
It is often said, as much by Conservative Members of Parliament as others I fear, that judges and lawyers are out of touch with the real world. In the case of

Mrs. Blanchard, who was the victim of Sefton metropolitan borough council's community care policy, the Court of Appeal, presided over by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Woolf, reached a conclusion that demonstrated not that the courts were out of touch with the real world but that they were very much in touch with it. I hope that my hon. Friends who have taken a different view to mine—a view that the Minister shares—will from, in the light of maturer reflection and the Master of the Roll's judgment, come to take a more sympathetic view.

Mr. Andrew Rowe: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the chances of judges in the Court of Appeal being in touch are far greater in cases involving people over 75 than in almost any other kind of case?

Mr. Garnier: I disagree whole-heartedly. The retirement age for members of the Court of Appeal is 75, so the point that my hon. Friend makes is a bad one. It demonstrates one of the difficulties that we have. It is easy to assume that the Court of Appeal exists in some sort of Gilbertian world in which a lot of geriatrics are finding it difficult to string two words together or reach rational conclusions. If my hon. Friend cares to look, he will find that the quality of the intellects of those who sit on the Court of Appeal bench is immensely superior to that which is demonstrated by the profusion of words to which we sometimes listen in this Chamber. I have to be careful. Here I am trying to persuade my hon. Friend that my argument is good, attractive and worthy of support. The last thing that I want to do is to be accused of being abusive to him. All that I would say is that the premise on which he advanced that intervention was wrong. I hope that he will care to go to "Who's Who" and look up the ages of Lord Woolf, and Lord Justices Roch and Henry. He will find that they are some little way under the age of 75 and even 70.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh) on his Bill and on choosing a subject which is largely uncontroversial and brings with it a social benefit, unlike some of the other private Members' Bills that we have discussed recently. I dare say that many people in the hon. Gentleman's metropolitan area in the west riding of Yorkshire will feel that he has done them a service. I congratulate him on that. I want to analyse to some extent the decision of the Court of Appeal presided over by the Master of the Rolls last July so that my hon. Friends, who have appeared in greater numbers than Government supporters, can understand why I believe that the relationship between two great limbs of our constitution—the judiciary and the legislature—can be fostered to assist the third limb of our constitution, which is, the Executive, represented most ably today by the three hon. Members on the Treasury Bench—the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry, and the hon. Member for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland). If that relationship is fostered, the House and the other place will produce and digest legislation in a way that produces better law. I believe that the Bill is a product of a sensible union of view and opinion.
The Master of the Rolls said at the outset of the Sefton case that he identified three main issues. I suggest that those issues applied not only to the facts of that case but to the general area of social policy involved. As the


Under-Secretary of State for Health already appreciates, having practised in the courts and no doubt dealt with similar cases, the case involved three primary issues. The first was whether a local authority, in deciding whether an elderly person was in need of care and attention—in which case it would be required to make arrangements for residential accommodation to be available to her—was entitled under section 21(1)(a) of the National Assistance Act 1948, to have regard to its limited financial resources. That is the big political question to which the Bill attempts to provide an answer that is acceptable to most people.
The second issue that the Master of the Rolls identified was whether if Sefton's limited resources were relevant, they justified the policy that it adopted. It is a policy which many cash-strapped local authorities have to consider. It is perhaps unfortunate for Sefton that it is the first borough council to have caught the attention of the relevant charitable interest groups and that its activities and policy have persuaded a charity to take the matter to court.
The third issue was whether, in determining whether care and attention was not otherwise available to a person, an authority was entitled to take the resources of that person into account, even if they fell below the levels prescribed by the National Assistance (Assessment of Resources) Regulations 1992 for the purposes of sections 22 to 26 of the 1948 Act.
I appreciate that, at the moment, that sounds deeply dry, deeply boring and thoroughly technical, but, unless one understands the foundations of social policy and the legal framework within which it is constructed, it is extremely difficult to understand quite why the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Bradford, West is a beacon, or perhaps even a lighthouse, for other jurisdictions and other countries.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: My hon. and learned Friend may be able to assist the Under-Secretary of State for Health by highlighting a real point in this case. It is not entirely clear to me whether Sefton borough council took into account the fact that it was strapped for resources, and therefore had a policy under which people had to spend their modest capital, down to £1,500, or whether it believed that people with between £1,500 and £16,000 were not in need of care, because they had a small amount of personal resource to look after themselves. Can my hon. and learned Friend elucidate that point?

Mr. Garnier: After six or seven years as a Member of Parliament, I have learnt that the Under-Secretary rarely needs help, and when he does, he does not take it. However, I shall try to help with the argument put to me by my right hon. and learned Friend by having a go at explaining what Sefton borough council was doing, which may help with our deliberations. If I get my explanation wrong, I am sure that the Under-Secretary, who is listening with great rapture, will put me right with the assistance of his official advisers.
There has been a great deal of press and other comment on the case. As I understand it, the borough council was applying its policy in a discriminatory way to distinguish, perhaps for financial or other reasons, between what it regarded as real welfare cases involving elderly residents

who had become enfeebled enough to need residential care, as happens with elderly residents in Manchester, in Sheffield, in Bedfordshire or in north Wiltshire, and elderly people who had put themselves in retirement homes in the seaside resort of Southport pre-emptively—before they needed residential care as the Department of Health understands it—and while they were still in relatively good health.
The bulk of Sefton borough council's policy addressed the issue of who was and was not to be assessed as needing residential care. The matter of their capital allowances were a detail of that policy, but it has taken on far greater significance for obvious political and social policy reasons, perhaps because Sefton borough council was insensitive and inept in the way in which it developed, arrived at and presented its policy.

Mr. Page: Did not the chairman of the social services committee take the position that the council had no desire to take away the savings of elderly people, or to challenge the law? The council's defence was that its actions were solely driven by its lack of financial resource.

Mr. Garnier: I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has no desire to bankrupt my constituents by imposing an extra 20p a gallon on fuel duty, but that will be the consequence. Any decision maker in national politics, national Government or local government must be taken to have accepted responsibility for, and anticipated the consequences of, his decisions. I cannot acquit the official at Sefton borough council of ignorance or of lack of responsibility for the consequences of his actions or advice any more than I can acquit the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose colleague the Under-Secretary looks a little puzzled. I dare say that the cost of petrol does not affect his constituents in Brent quite as much as it does mine. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Page) will allow me to leave that point hanging for others to pick up.
I am happy that Labour Back-Bench representation in the Chamber has now trebled, and three Labour Back Benchers are present.

Mr. Stephen Pound: Quality, not quantity.

Mr. Garnier: I am sure that that is entirely right. I offer my congratulations to the hon. Gentleman on his half century this year: we should therefore discuss community care for the elderly with some care.
In the Sefton case, which I was briefly analysing, the—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman will assist me. We have discussed the background to the Bill at great length, and we must now speak about its content. He has assisted me and given me a grasp of why we are having such a debate on Third Reading, but we have passed from the debate on the background—what is done is done. We are discussing Third Reading, and we should talk about content.

Mr. Garnier: I fully understand your point, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Perhaps I may illustrate what I am


doing by giving this example: a tapestry is composed not only of threads of wool, but of latticework through which the wool is woven.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman makes my point. The backcloth has been fully explained to me. Now I must look at the tapestry.

Mr. Garnier: You are, Mr. Deputy Speaker, a man of great and acute perception. My anxiety is that my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) is not quite as quick as you, and his intervention suggested that further explanation of the backcloth was required so that he would understand the interwoven colours created for us by the hon. Member for Bradford, West, who represents a textile constituency. I shall move on because, if I am not careful, my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Sir D. Madel), whose patience may not be as great and accommodating as yours, Mr. Deputy Speaker, may contrive to put me in a community care home.
Rather than wait for my explanation, hon. Members should study the law report on the Sefton case; there is much to learn from it. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) wishes to intervene, but I first give way to the hon. Member for Bradford, West.

Mr. Singh: I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for giving way. I must leave the Chamber, not out of bad manners, but out of necessity. I hope that he will forgive me.

Mr. Garnier: The hon. Gentleman is a man of unfailing courtesy, and I fully understand that he has constituency engagements to attend to. I was slightly amused when he said that he had a post office to open and could not get out of it.

Mr. Singh: I am afraid that stamp duty might be imposed if I am not there.

Mr. Garnier: I send him to Euston station with our good wishes, and trust that by the time that he reads Hansard his Bill will have made the progress that he and its supporters wish for it. I wish him all the best.
I would have made other arguments, but you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, required me to leave them to another forum. Before coming to the second thrust of my argument, I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire.

Mr. Gray: I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for giving way before moving to the second thrust of his argument, although I find it hard to understand why he has taken almost 20 minutes to get through the first thrust.

Mrs. Eleanor Laing: My hon. and learned Friend is a barrister.

Mr. Gray: Yes, but my hon. and learned Friend is not being paid by the hour in this place.
I bring my hon. and learned Friend back to the reason why he was expatiating a little on the judgment in the Sefton borough council case. An important point about the Bill highlights the difficulties caused by it not having been considered in detail by a Standing Committee.
The point that the judge in the case missed was Sefton borough council's feeling that certain residents of Southport, being perfectly fit and healthy, did not need its financial support. The point about capital allowances is that they are awarded at the point when social services departments decide that a person needs care and attention that would otherwise be unavailable to him. Sefton borough council feels that, following the judgment, many people could receive support who would not otherwise be considered to need it.

Mr. Garnier: That is true, and relates to what I said in response to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell). If people are not assessed as needing residential care, the capital allowances for residential care do not apply. The Bill does not bite on that aspect of social policy. It would bite only in the cases of elderly people who had already been assessed as needing residential care, like Mrs. Blanchard.

Mr. Dominic Grieve: The fear that has been expressed in that context is that unscrupulous local authorities might exploit the loophole and fail to assess people at all, or simply not get on with the job. People who fell below the £16,000 threshold would then receive no support from the local authority. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that, even if that problem cannot be addressed in the Bill, we may have to address it eventually?

Mr. Garnier: It may be possible to address it in the Bill if their lordships take up my hon. Friend's point, but, on Third Reading, it is not for us to do more than acknowledge his point and hope that others who take a close interest in these matters—including the Minister—will do what they think appropriate.
It is still possible for a council to save on the cost of caring for elderly people who have put themselves into homes simply by not assessing them as having any needs as defined by statute. The hon. Member for Bradford, West may not have come to grips with that, but the House should do so before the Bill goes to another place. The capital of elderly people could be run down with no more consideration than the council would have for someone aged 30 who was staying in bed-and-breakfast accommodation or an hotel. How councils behave in such cases will depend on their integrity and good will, and on how they make difficult choices about prioritising their resources.
Government is difficult enough for the Conservative party, but we now have a Labour Government who have not made a decision of any complexity or national significance for 18 years except within their own party system. It is essential for us to remind not only the new Government but local authorities of the huge importance of getting priorities right, and having the courage to stand by their decisions when put to the test. I see that the Minister agrees whole-heartedly with my point about the need to order priorities properly.
The Bill illustrates just one aspect of that need. I hope that, if we allow it a speedy passage to the other place and, eventually, the statute book, borough councillors throughout the country—as well as their officials and advisers—will realise that the House is now watching them to make sure that elderly people are not artificially


prevented from gaining access to the care that they so richly deserve after a lifetime of hard work, thrift and saving.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: I am grateful for the opportunity to make a brief speech. I welcome the Bill, and congratulate the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh) both on promoting it and on steering it successfully through its stages so far.
The question of how to pay for old age is probably one of the most difficult questions of the day. As people get older, they experience real anxiety about how they would manage if they had to go into a home: it preys on everyone's mind, in connection with themselves or elderly relatives. Indeed, they may worry about how their children will manage in the future. This is rightly a topic for political debate.
I shall not dwell on the distinction between the Government and the Opposition—between the Labour and Conservative parties—as reflected in what is sometimes described as the Chancellor's smash-and-grab raid on pension funds through the abolition of advance corporation tax. In a sense, however, that is part of an overall approach to the subject. It is important to enable people to build up capital so that they can care for themselves, and—here there should be common ground between the parties—to keep at least some of that capital to pass on to their children.
I have a particular insight, as one who was first a junior Minister in 1986, in what was then the Department of Health and Social Security. The Minister of State was one John Major, my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon. At that time, Conservative party policy was to increase the amount of protected capital from £3,000 to the still modest figure of £6,000, which has subsequently been increased to the £16,000 in the Bill. It must be borne in mind that that £16,000 is not wholly protected. When people's capital has dwindled to £16,000, which is probably only about half the value of a modest house—even in Sefton, in the north-west of England—they will still have to pay a substantially higher weekly sum for board and lodging in a residential old people's home.
The Bill aims to resolve what was, frankly, an abuse introduced by Sefton borough council. The ideology of those councillors was different from the ideology that I think prevails today—in the country and, I hope, in the Government, although it is their party which predominates in Sefton. I am grateful to the Government for at least moving that far.
Sefton borough council was saying that it would not provide accommodation for someone who was in need of care and attention because of the frailties of old age until that person's capital had dwindled from £16,000 to £1,500. The Bill seeks to correct that, which is why we welcome it. Let me make a point which, although rather technical, is important. Clarification of it, even on Third Reading, may assist the construction of the Act that this Bill will become, and of national assistance Acts generally. The point was highlighted by the Master of the Rolls when the Court of Appeal had to make a decision in the case involving Mrs. Blanchard.
The point is that, provided that it is clear that an old or disabled person—people may be frail for reasons other than old age—is in need of care and attention, there is no entitlement to take into account the local authority's alleged lack of resources. I accept that local authorities are under pressure.
I think that we can be sure, but I should like clarification on the point that one is not entitled to take into account the fact that a person still has £16,000 and that the amount has not dwindled to £1,500. A person who is down to £16,000 must be careful if he is in need of care and attention. He should not be told that he may spend £14,500 on looking after himself and then make another approach to the authority. Such a loophole seems to exist because the fundamental legislation, the national assistance legislation as amended from time to time, refers to people who are in need of care and attention that is not otherwise available to them.
Of course, money gives freedom and the power to purchase services. Notwithstanding the Bill's intention, it could be said that people could spend their money on caring for themselves, perhaps marginally by upping the amount of private home help. That means that they could put off going into residential accommodation for a long time and, of course, that will prolong the anxiety of the elderly and, in practice, it may force them to deplete their modest resources from £16,000 to whatever figure the relevant local authority—it may not be the one in Sefton—may set. It may not stick to £1,500.
I support the Bill and hope that it will be successful in overcoming the difficulty. I have highlighted the issue, albeit at the 11th hour on Third Reading because it is important to bring it to the attention of the House so that the Minister may comment on it. If we cannot put it right at this stage of the Bill's progress, I hope that the Government will be sympathetic to my point and will use some future Finance Bill or assistance Bill to close continuing loopholes.

Mr. Andrew Rowe: I fear that I have to join the Bill's promoter in apologising to the House because, if the subject is debated for the length of time that it deserves, I may not be here for the final speeches. I hope that the Minister will forgive me if I have to leave early. One of my local hospitals is threatened with closure and all hon. Members will understand that such a matter requires attention from the hon. Member concerned.
We debate this important Bill against a background of quite alarming figures. The latest population estimates of mid-1996 show that the United Kingdom's population aged over 75 numbered 4,192,000. Of course, a high proportion of people who live until the age of 75 will live until they are over 90. One of the enormous difficulties for Britain's elderly is to have any idea of how long they have to budget for. They have absolutely no way—none of us has—of knowing when the asteroid will hit them, and they cannot know how much money they will need or how to apportion it.
The mean cost of residential care is £275 a week. In my part of the country, that is modest, and it is easily seen that the fear of destitution in old age is acute. Research suggests only 7 per cent. of the elderly are confident that their children will look after them. I think


that they are being unduly pessimistic because Age Concern figures show that we in this nation still look after elderly relatives. However, 90-year-olds have 65-year-old children and, at the age of 65, many people are not in particularly good health. Their capacity regularly to drive long distances to look after a parent who has moved or from whom they have moved is much impaired. Even those children who want to look after their parents are often in no position to do so.
As the Chancellor told us on Tuesday that
half the population have only £200 or less in savings",—[Official Report, 17 March 1998; Vol. 308, c. 1102.]
the demand for publicly provided residential care at the full cost to the taxpayer will rise sharply. I can tell the Minister that, among the plethora of reviews that have been undertaken by the Government, the tangled and now entirely historically based relationship between national assistance Acts, national health service Acts and community care Acts needs to be completely overhauled.
There is something ridiculous about the conflict between the regulations governing people in residential care, those in long-term hospital care or those who are being looked after in the community. For example, a person in a private residential home probably has to pay for medication, but a person in a long-term national health service bed does not, although he may be almost exactly the same kind of person. The anomaly that the Bill tries to correct clearly points up the fact that the way in which we provide residential care needs to be wholly re-examined. Given a sufficiency of respite care and the ability to take it regularly, many elderly people could survive satisfactorily where they would prefer to survive—in their own homes. However, the elasticity of social services provision is so tight that that is now difficult to provide.
I also view with considerable concern the explosion in child care. Whatever my personal views about the sense of paying people to look after other people's children and denying the parents the kind of income that would allow them to look after the children themselves, which would be much better for them, the pool of carers from whom the elderly would expect support will be drained by an explosion in exactly the same kind of people being recruited into the rather more appealing task of looking after children. That will cause considerable anxiety to everybody in the field, and I hope that the Government are taking that on board.
There is another enormous difficulty and a real conundrum. For the past 75 years, we have encouraged people—by mortgage tax relief and a host of other devices, intended and unintended—to view their homes as their principal stock of value. That is not the case in many other European countries. In many countries of mainland Europe, people rent accommodation and keep their savings in some other form, but in Britain the biggest store of value is in the home. Many people have bought their houses with the specific intention of having them as stores of value against a rainy day, but when the rainy day comes, they have become so emotionally attached to what they no longer call a house but now call their home that they are deeply resentful of any suggestion of moving out.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: My hon. Friend raises an interesting sociological point. That was not always the

case. My grandfather, who could probably have afforded to buy a house, never did and always rented accommodation off a large landowner, which tended to be the Harrow Trust or something of that nature. Such a system left people with free capital to look after themselves, which was much more effective than tying it up, as we tend to do now. Perhaps we should not be so ideologically attached to putting so much money into our homes and should try to encourage people to go in a different direction.

Mr. Pound: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Although I realise that the accommodation arrangements of the ancestors of the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell) are of extreme interest to him and his immediate family, what remote relevance has that to the matter under discussion?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I agree that we are going a bit beyond the scope of a Third Reading debate.

Mr. Rowe: I of course accept a rebuke, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but the fact is that the Bill seeks to set right an anomaly and, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell) has pointed out, there is some doubt about whether it will succeed in preventing local authorities from introducing various forms of informal rationing, which will be just as deleterious as the form of rationing that Sefton council introduced.
I am green with envy about this measure because I have never yet won any of the ballots in this House. I have given up subscribing to the national lottery on the basis that my experience in this place suggests that I shall never win anything anyway. I have never had a private Member's Bill in all my time here, so I am deeply envious, but the fact is that, although this is a useful tidying-up measure, the Government have to get a grip on the issue at its heart and have a real shake around because, otherwise, we will not succeed.
I give one further example. One of the reasons why local authorities are under such pressure that they behave as Sefton council behaved is local authority planning restrictions. Many of my constituents, and I myself, frequently applaud such restrictions but, when confronted with a particular dilemma, we start wondering about them. They make it difficult for 60-year-olds who want to look after their 80 or 95-year-old parent to adapt their home in ways that would allow the parent to come and live with them.
That is partly because polices such as the green belt—policies of which I am largely in favour—make it difficult to allow extensions to houses, but also partly because there is a residual, inappropriate anxiety among local authorities that, somehow, by improving their home in that way, members of the younger generation are enhancing the value of their houses, and should not be allowed to do so. That is a real difficulty.
The other great pressure on local authorities is that many of them, as we have heard already from many interventions today, have an extraordinary ideological hostility to private care provision. Quite honestly, the way in which local authorities of that persuasion delay assessments, so that a care home has to carry two or three empty beds, when it may be only a six or seven-bed home


anyway, until it gets very near to ruin, or the way in which they manipulate the lists in other ways in favour of their own care provision, is an absolute scandal. It all goes back to the core problem: we have a set of contradictory views about the value of people providing for their own care.

Mr. Gray: Is that not particularly disgraceful when county council homes cost significantly more than the private homes that they are competing with, as is the case in Wiltshire? It is even worse when, as in Wiltshire, the county council announces that, ideologically, it is determined to continue to use its own homes unless those homes are sold. Even if they are then sold, they can be sold only to non-profit-making organisations. Is that not a disgrace?

Mr. Rowe: It is a disgrace and it should be made absolutely crystal clear that local authorities that behave in that way are diminishing the number of people whom they can afford to look after and so depriving needy people of care.
There is a real difficulty because people who have been frugal and provident all their lives and who want to provide for their own care and well-being in old age, are terrified of the future. If we cannot do anything else, I hope that the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng), will be able to give us some assurance—when he has stopped his private conversation—that, beyond the narrow confines of this Third Reading, the Government are seriously addressing the tangle that leaves so many old people, who have done all the things that we applaud in trying to create savings for themselves, in a state of fear, confusion and, in many cases, pretty miserable living conditions.

Mrs. Eleanor Laing: I congratulate the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh) on introducing the Bill, which I thoroughly support. The one point on which I disagree with him is that he said that

people do not deal with this subject with passion. On the contrary, at the Conservative party conference a few years ago—

Mr. James Paice: Conservative party conferences are very passionate.

Mrs. Laing: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I made a passionate speech on this very subject. I found at the party conference that the vast majority of Conservative party representatives throughout the country entirely agreed with what I said. Therefore, I know that I must have been right. It was an excellent example of how democracy works in the Conservative party because, only a few months later, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the changes in the appropriate legislation, which were outlined so well this morning by the hon. Member for Bradford, West. On that day, I urged the then Chancellor to change the limits that are applied when the financial situation of an elderly person is assessed in examining whether their long-term care should be funded by the state, or whether they should have to pay for it themselves.
Although I had the full support of the many thousands of Conservative party members who were there on that day in Blackpool, and the support to a certain extent from the then Chancellor who made those changes, the great importance of this subject to the lives of almost every family has not been fully recognised. It is unfortunate that there is a need for such a Bill, but the hon. Member for Bradford, West is brave and courageous in introducing it.
The need arises because of the disgraceful attitude of certain local authorities that have continued to employ a policy of envy against people who have worked hard, saved and built up their resources, which they are entitled to retain to pass on to their families. It is sad that some local authorities continue to disregard the wishes of the people in their local communities who elected them. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray), I can commend my local council—Essex county council—on its attitude—

It being Eleven o'clock, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER interrupted the proceedings, pursuant to Standing Order No. 11 (Friday sittings).

London Underground

11 am

The Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. John Prescott): With permission, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I wish to make a statement about the London Underground.
The underground is part of the lifeblood of London. More than 800 million journeys will be made on the underground this year. London Underground has made great strides since the King's Cross fire 10 years ago. Its management systems have been overhauled, its employment practices modernised, and productivity improved. All that reflects great credit on everyone who has worked for London Underground, but, for many years, investment in the underground has simply been too low to ensure that the worn-out assets are properly replaced. Without the necessary investment, operational efficiency is constantly undermined by old and unreliable infrastructure.
For a very long time, funding plans for the underground have been chopped and changed every year, both under the Greater London council and under the previous Government. I might add that all Governments have been involved in making cuts in investment in the underground at different times. Our analysis shows that such uncertainty and short-termism generally increases the cost of completing the underground's investment programme.
According to London Transport, there is now an "investment backlog" of some £1.2 billion. Despite that, the previous Government in their last Budget announced sharp reductions in the funding available to London Transport for the next two years. Combined with the cost overruns on the Jubilee line extension project, those cuts led to London Transport's planned investment being cut by almost a half.
In our election manifesto, we rejected privatisation and we promised that we would implement a new concept—a public-private partnership—to modernise the underground, to safeguard its commitment to the public interest and to guarantee value for money to taxpayers and passengers. I can now tell the House how we plan to deliver on that commitment.
Over the past 10 months, we have undertaken a thorough and careful analysis of all the options for developing the public-private partnership. We have examined a wide range of options, and have taken advice from a number of expert sources, including financial and engineering advisers, the Health and Safety Commission, the passengers committee and London Transport itself. A summary of the key facts and analysis will be placed in the Library of the House. I also want to mention the expertise that my hon. Friend the Paymaster General has contributed to our work, along with his Treasury colleagues. Their support has been much appreciated.
Our solution represents an entirely new approach—a third way. It is not a privatisation—or even partial privatisation; nor is it an old-style, publicly funded nationalisation. It is a publicly owned, publicly accountable model to get the best from both the public and the private sector.
Our solution has three main elements: first, operation in the public sector; secondly, infrastructure investment in a public-private partnership; and, thirdly, an extra

investment now. First, we believe that the operation of London Underground services should remain as a single, integrated entity. We are also convinced that the operations should be firmly and securely a public sector responsibility. The underground network, integrated ticketing, travelcard, the tube map and logo—all the key features of the underground system—are valued by tube users and will remain the responsibility of London Underground, acting in the public interest, publicly owned and publicly accountable. We are convinced that that will be best for reliability, safety and public confidence.
The second element of our plans is to involve the private sector by awarding one, two or three contracts to finance, maintain and modernise the underground's infrastructure. There will be a competitive bidding process. We shall seek expert advice on the best way to structure that competition, including the best length of contracts. We will choose the contractor or contractors and the set of arrangements that will deliver the best value for money. If the best value can be obtained by having a single contractor, that is what we will have.
The infrastructure contractors will be under an obligation to eliminate the investment backlog, and to maintain and modernise the underground's trains and other assets, such as track, signalling, stations and escalators. There will be a performance regime with incentives and stiff penalties. That way, the operating company will be able to ensure that the contractor performs to the required standards. The freehold ownership of the assets will remain with the public sector. At the end of a contract, the assets will be returned to the public sector, in a much improved condition.
The contractor or contractors will be responsible for financing the investment that the underground urgently needs. They will be free to borrow the sums needed from the private sector capital markets, and will not be constrained by the annual public expenditure plans. As a result, they will be able to use their capital much more efficiently. Their constraint will be a practical one of how much work can be done without causing unreasonable disruption to passengers.
I have already paid tribute to the hard work of the London Transport and London Underground work force. The fact that the system runs as well as it does is a tribute to their efforts and, frankly, their efforts alone. Most underground staff will remain employees of London Underground, but it will make sense for staff who currently work on the procurement, installation and maintenance of hardware—track, signalling, escalators and rolling stock—to transfer with their work to the contractors. All this will be subject to detailed future negotiations. A small nucleus of engineering staff will be needed in the operating company to administer the contracts with the infrastructure companies and to ensure that they deliver.
I am today writing to every member of staff in London Transport to explain our policy and the commitments we are giving to reassure them. I will place a copy of the letter in the Library. I want to reassure staff that the rights they have under their contracts of employment—covering pay, hours, union recognition, and so on—will be protected as we move into the new structure. Existing staff will continue to benefit from concessionary travel. We will work with London Transport, the London Transport


pension scheme trustees and the Inland Revenue to ensure that staff have the right to remain in the London Transport pension scheme as contributing members.
We want to make a start on modernising the underground, in preparation for its return to the people of London. On 7 May, Londoners will vote in a referendum, in which they can choose to establish a strategic authority for Greater London to put it on a par with other great capital cities around the world. When the Greater London authority is established, the underground will, with the rest of London Transport, transfer to it. It will then be not only publicly owned, but properly accountable to the people of London, through the mayor and the assembly. Mrs. Thatcher nationalised London Underground: we will return it to the people of London. [Interruption.] That is a statement of fact.
Over the next two years, my Department will work closely with London Transport in restructuring London Underground and managing the transition to a public-private partnership. That will involve a lot of work, and I will meet London Transport very soon to agree a programme for implementing our plans. I will also look to set London Underground demanding efficiency targets to achieve over the next two years, before it transfers to the GLA.
London Transport already has extensive powers to let contracts of the kind I have described, but should any additional legal powers prove desirable, we shall invite Parliament to consider giving them as part of the legislative arrangements to establish the Greater London authority.
Safety is, of course, a top priority and we have already consulted the Health and Safety Commission. The commission has confirmed that it believes that it will be possible to implement our proposals in a way that maintains and develops the underground's safety performance. The Health and Safety Executive will take that work forward, and I am writing formally to the chairman of the commission today to ask him to advise me on the outcome as soon as possible.
Our proposals will take a little time to establish and deliver. However, during the period of transition, we cannot allow the situation to deteriorate further. Therefore, as the third element of our policy—thanks to the prudent management of our public finances in the past year, as indicated by the Chancellor in his Budget—I can now announce that the Government will be providing an extra £365 million over the next two years. That additional money is over and above the money that the previous Government planned to provide and will be used for core underground investment, preparing the public-private partnership. By promising London Transport that money now to spend over the next two years, it will be able most efficiently to plan its investment programme.
The additional money will mean that, in the two years from April, total investment in the core underground—including private finance initiative investment—will be £1 billion. The extra funding that I have announced will enable more investment projects to go ahead in the next two years. Such projects will enable us to perform additional track works on the Victoria and Northern lines; to convert the old Jubilee line trains for use on the

Piccadilly line—with 10 new trains available by 2001—helping to increase the line's capacity by over 10 per cent; to replace about 15 more escalators, including ones at key stations; and to refurbish 30 stations.
Our public-private partnership plans are based on long-term investment programmes—worth more than £7 billion in today's prices—over 15 years, aimed at creating a first-class underground for London. The investment will bring further benefits for passengers, such as track and civil works to remove speed restrictions, leading to faster journey times; increased train service levels as new signalling systems are introduced; and refurbished and modernised stations.
It is, however, not enough only to have a modern, refurbished, underground: it must be available to everyone, including disabled people. That objective will take time to achieve, but I am asking London Transport to examine how its current plans can be accelerated by the extra funding that I have announced today. I want to involve disability groups in considering our priorities, and will begin with my own advisory group—the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee.
Earlier this week, I announced our plans for a £21 million river boat service for the new millennium and beyond. Today, I am announcing our plans for a £7 billion investment programme over the next 15 years for the Underground. I want London to become a showcase for a modern, integrated public transport system. We have produced a radical, modern and imaginative solution to achieve that goal. I shall be proud to return the underground to the people of London. I commend our plans to the House.

Sir Norman Fowler: May I first question the manner of this announcement—on a Friday morning in private Members' time? I remind the Secretary of State that the House has been waiting for the statement for almost 12 months, as the underground is of importance not only to London but to the nation. By choosing a Friday morning for the statement, many hon. Members—as is entirely evident in the Chamber—have been excluded from asking questions on it.
The Government's proposals are an unsatisfactory and inadequate compromise. The Secretary of State has accepted the principle of privatisation for infrastructure investment—in total contrast to many of Labour's statements before the general election—but he is content for operations to remain as a nationalised industry, which almost everyone now thinks is an outdated and failed model.
Does the Secretary of State not accept that the split between the public and private sectors is almost bound to lead to in-built conflict, with the public-operated company blaming the private infrastructure companies when things go wrong? If that happens, will not the travelling public lose out?
Does the right hon. Gentleman not realise that one of the great advantages of privatisation is not only the possibility of attracting investment but the way in which it has successfully introduced private sector disciplines into the operation of old public sector organisations? Is that not the lesson of transport privatisations—such as the National Freight Consortium and Associated British Ports—which the Secretary of State personally opposed?
Can the Secretary of State say which of the models of privatised infrastructure companies he is aiming for? He said that he would accept that one company could run the entire infrastructure, but is that his preference—or does he prefer three separate organisations?
Will the Secretary of State make it clear whether the public money that he announced will go to the underground over the next two years will be new money—entirely separate from money that has already been announced in the Chancellor's statement—or is it money that was announced earlier in the week in the Budget statement?
We have always backed private investment. However, is there not a danger that the system announced today will prove to be the most expensive means of attracting private investment into the system? Will the Secretary of State therefore publish the consultants' reports and the options that were available to him? Will he tell the House today how much the Government have spent on those consultancy arrangements?
Is not the main trouble that the policy on the underground has been determined merely to meet the Secretary of State's aim of avoiding the Labour party's pre-election slogan about "wholesale privatisation"?
The prospect is that today's statement will bring us botched-up privatisation that will not serve the interests of the taxpayer or of London Underground staff, and that, above all, it will not serve the interests of the travelling public.

Mr. Prescott: Clearly the right hon. Gentleman has not fully understood the implications of the statement. First, however—to correct him—we have been in government for only 10 months, so he could not have been waiting for the statement for 12 months. Perhaps he was expecting us to take office earlier than we did—[Interruption.] I made it absolutely clear that we were rejecting privatisation—[Interruption.] May I answer the right hon. Gentleman?

Sir Norman Fowler: Why was the statement on a Friday?

Mr. Prescott: I will deal with that point. [Interruption.] Can we stop this sort of harassment? [Interruption.] Would the right hon. Gentleman like to huff again? It was a very powerful comment. I should like to deal with the privatisation issue, but I shall deal with the Friday point—I would not miss it out.
We made it clear that we would not privatise the underground, and that we wanted a publicly owned and publicly accountable railway. I think that I have justified that decision in my statement. I would not attempt—having been in office for only 10 months—to try to justify the previous Government's privatisation measures, especially when I am trying to deal with the effects of those measures, such as the channel tunnel rail link, the sale of the rolling stock companies and of Railtrack, and underinvestment.
I shall not go into the sorry history of privatisation as operated by the previous Government; that will be for another time. However, that history is not evidence that such privatisations are the best way forward, and we totally rejected it.
The Government have made the statement today because, as the Chancellor said, statements will be made as a consequence of the Budget. Statements were made on Wednesday and on Thursday, and, today, we are taking the opportunity to make another one. I agree that the underground is a national issue, but it is very much a part of the interests of Londoners and of London Members—as we can see by the number of London Members in the Chamber for the statement. Today was a proper time to make the statement. Moreover, on Monday, I shall be involved in Brussels in negotiations on the Kyoto agreement.
Competing demands are made on the time of Secretaries of State, and I apologise if a Friday statement has caused any inconvenience to hon. Members. Nevertheless, it is quite proper for the Government to have made a statement on Friday. I do not think that Londoners will worry whether the statement was made on a Monday or a Friday—they will just be pleased that someone now has a future and a vision for London Transport, which is what I shall now deal with.
The right hon. Gentleman asked whether our proposals on splitting the underground would cause conflict. The advisers have told us no; as I said, the reports and the analyses of the reports are in the Library. The private sector can make a contribution by providing capital, but our proposals will not result in privatisation.
Although private capital can be invested—and we shall seek such investment—we believe that the model that we have chosen will be the best way of ensuring that taxpayers get the best value. That is our judgment. Once people examine the advice that we have received, and listen to the debate that will follow my announcement, they will make their own judgment. No doubt there will be debates in the House on the Greater London authority Bill and the changes that we may well have to make to meet those requirements, but, at the moment, our judgment is that it is the best way to proceed.
The right hon. Gentleman asked whether I believed that there should be one contractor or three contractors. If I can get the best value out of one contractor, that will be the best way to proceed. However, the choice through competitive bidding of one, two or three contractors will allow us to make a judgment on the best value. It is called the competitive bidding process, and I did not think that it would be challenged by the Opposition. Once we have received the bids, we shall make a judgment; that is the best way to use the taxpayers' resources. We want to get the best value and provide a good underground system.
The right hon. Gentleman asked whether new money was involved. As I said, £300 million of the £365 million was included in my right hon. Friend the Chancellor's statement of £500 million over three years. We have also taken into account money that London Underground was holding back because of the cuts in its investment programme imposed by the previous Administration. If we include the PFI, we shall now be able to invest something in the order of £1 billion over the next two years. The £360 million or so also takes into account the cuts that would have been imposed on London Underground by the previous Administration. It is extra money and it will be very welcome.
I do not believe that it will be the most expensive way to proceed. Checks and balances will be built into the negotiations. It is an excellent opportunity for London


Underground. It is a publicly owned and publicly accountable solution, but, above all, it will give Londoners the chance to have a decent underground system.

Mr. Tom Brake: I welcome the additional funding that has been secured for the next two years. Will the Deputy Prime Minister clarify how much of the additional £365 million will be spent on privatisation consultancy fees? Will he confirm that safety will be a top priority if Railtrack is successful in bidding for the infrastructure? After all, just over a month ago, Railtrack was criticised for persistently failing to resolve poor track conditions.
Does the right hon. Gentleman believe that an opportunity has been missed to introduce environmental taxes such as congestion charges, which could reduce pollution in London, as well as giving Londoners a first-rate underground?
Finally, does the Secretary of State believe that Londoners will be prepared to wait at least 15 years for the misery on London Underground to be addressed?

Mr. Prescott: I am starting immediately by investing the extra resources. One of the major constraints will be the speed at which we can implement the investment programme without causing massive disruption on the underground. It is a matter of that, just as much as it is a balance of resources. We are investing the money that London Transport says that it requires, and I am aiming to provide the resources. The hon. Gentleman mentioned 15 years. It will take two years to negotiate the contracts and I have already announced the money.
The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) asked how much was being spent on consultancy fees. We have spent only about £100,000 on such fees, but, considering the sums of money that are involved, it is only right that we should take proper advice. Although it will not be the hundreds of millions of pounds that were involved in previous privatisations and the selling off of under-valued assets, we do not yet have an estimate of how much the contracts will involve. I shall have to discuss that with London Underground. If there are one, two or three companies that will make a difference to how much is involved. Having established the principles in the statement, we will now need to enter discussions with London Transport.
I do not know who the bidders will be or whether Railtrack will be one of them. We shall wait for the bids, examine them thoroughly and consider which will provide the best value.
As to whether we might consider parking charges, environmental taxes and so on, such matters are part of an integrated transport system. We shall publish a White Paper which will address those issues. We are dealing with the problems on the underground immediately and in an effective way which will be welcomed by Londoners.

Mr. Keith Hill: First, may I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the sheer scale of the new investment that he is negotiating? This settlement has secured for Londoners a tube system of which they can be proud for a generation. Secondly, I congratulate him

on the excellent deal that he has secured for the travelling public. I also welcome the assurance that he has offered the staff of London Underground that their present pay and conditions will be sustained, as will their pension provisions for the future.
Thirdly, while we very much welcome the commitment of private contractors to the partnership, will my right hon. Friend confirm that there will be tough sanctions for any shortfall in services that they pledge to deliver?

Mr. Prescott: I thank my hon. Friend for his words of support. I have made it very clear that staff conditions are extremely important, particularly given that previous privatisations often robbed them of their full benefits and pensions. We do not intend to make the same mistake.
We are clear that there will be tough sanctions in the contractual obligations in respect of the investment programmes. We are doing everything that we can to avoid the mistakes that were made in previous privatisations and were the reasons why we rejected privatisation. Public accountability will mean just that, and public ownership means that we shall have a stronger sanction in making sure that the contracts work.

Mr. Peter Brooke: While I join my constituents in Pimlico in thanking the Government for their investment in the Victoria track to address the recent problems, how far will today's announcement improve the signalling defects that have bedevilled London Underground in recent years and, in particular, have held up the Jubilee line extension? Given that there is a limit to the number of questions that we can ask on such occasions, will he promise an early debate, perhaps in Government time?

Mr. Prescott: I should certainly like to have a debate on the matter, but that is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. I shall certainly pass on the right hon. Gentleman's comments.
I shall be discussing with London Transport the many investment priorities. Signalling is extremely important. The right hon. Gentleman mentions it in regard to the Jubilee line, but, to be fair, London Transport was not to blame for the failure in the signalling system; it was the fault of a private company that did not live up to its contract to produce on time. These things can happen in public and private companies. Nevertheless, we want to establish a proper order of priorities, and signalling is very important.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his statement will bring great pleasure not only to Londoners, but to all those who use the grossly overcrowded tube system? It is clear that he has learnt many difficult lessons from the privatisation of British Rail, and I hope that, when the time comes, he will ensure not only that the companies maintain the high contractual obligations that he intends to place on them, but that the public are able to register their approval or disapproval in adequate terms.
Finally, it must have been a pretty incredible team of engineers that built an underground system that is still going after more than 100 years.

Mr. Prescott: I thank my hon. Friend for her support. She is quite right. I have always been impressed by the


sheer scale of disinvestment in the underground system that had continued for decades and the sums of money that were required to replace track, bridges, tunnels and so on. It needed something more radical than reliance on the Treasury to provide resources from year to year, as that can change under different Governments, as we all know.
We have learnt a great deal from previous privatisations, and we shall take that into account in the contracts. We shall make it clear that we shall need tough contracts. As for the public having more of a say in the running of the London underground system, that is an important point and I shall say more about it at a later date.

Mr. Nicholas Soames: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is important that the contractors are given the opportunity to be bold in the works that they will need to carry out? Such is the scale of the work required on some of the lines that it may be important for parts of those lines to be closed completely for a time to allow the contractors to deal with the problems in one go rather than on a bit-by-bit basis. Does he accept from all those who use the tube in London that if he succeeds in pulling this off, we shall want to have him stuffed and put in the British museum?

Mr. Prescott: Presumably that will be after I have died! The hon. Gentleman raises a serious point about how such a programme can be implemented. I said earlier that there are probably more constraints on the implementation of the programme than on the availability of capital resource. We shall consider that at length. Work can be undertaken during the night on the underground. However, we shall have to choose whether to close an entire unit to get the work done faster in the long run or to do it in bits and pieces. As we have seen from the motorway network, tackling a job in bits and pieces can result in a lot of trouble. We shall do our best to deal with the problem.
One of the advantages of the London system is that, because transport is still publicly owned and integrated, we can ensure that buses and trains work together to secure the maximum movement for people and the least disadvantage from whatever programme we implement.

Mr. Neil Gerrard: May I thank my right hon. Friend for the new investment coming soon to the Victoria line, which I use every day? I should be grateful if he would clarify a detail about the contracts. He has talked about £7 billion of investment over 15 years. Does he envisage the contracts running for the whole of that period, particularly if there is a single contract? I appreciate that value for money will be the key to deciding whether there will be more than one contract. If there is more than one, will lines be put together, or might there be more than one contractor on a line?

Mr. Prescott: Those are matters for further discussion and negotiation with the contractors. My hon. Friend has raised some real problems, to which we hope to find the best solutions. I cannot give an effective answer yet.
My hon. Friend welcomed the investment programme. It is possible because the Treasury gave us new money, against the cuts that had already been imposed on the

underground. That is an important reason why we shall be able to get on with investment. When the previous Administration made a statement to the House, a cut of almost 50 per cent. in investment was envisaged because the Treasury thought that if the system was to be privatised—a policy to which the previous Government were committed—the money was not needed at that stage. We have taken a different view. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has found new money for investment so that we can pass on an improving system to the people of London.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: We shall want to study the complex plan carefully. Under the public-private partnership, who will take the tricky decisions on manning levels and fare pricing?

Mr. Prescott: The same people who are taking those decisions now—London Transport. There has been a 10,000 reduction in the work force, with increasing numbers of people using the system and a considerable increase in productivity. The same people will be in control. That is why it will be publicly owned and publicly accountable.

Ms Karen Buck: As my constituency includes 10 tube stations, I greatly welcome my right hon. Friend's statement. I hope that some of the investment may be available to deal with the persistent signalling problems on the Bakerloo line and with Ladbroke Grove station, which is literally propped up on stilts.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the London public will favourably compare the pragmatic, partnership-based investment approach to the underground with the dogmatic approach to privatisation of the Conservatives, who made such a mess of the privatisation of the former British Rail?

Mr. Prescott: I shall leave it to the people of London to make their judgment about that. Every hon. Member has a point to make about their local line. They all have problems of disinvestment. London Transport has estimated the total at £1.2 billion. I am not covering all that, but I am making a start. We hope that the programmes that we plan in the contracts for 15 years and beyond will deal with everybody's problems, because we want a modern tube system that meets the needs of London and the tremendous investment needs of more than £7 billion.

Mr. John Wilkinson: Is it not remarkable that, after years of rhetoric in opposition and a policy hiatus of 10 months in government, the Secretary of State has come to the House to give a statement that perpetuates uncertainty rather than clarifying the future of London Transport underground? Is it not highly unlikely that contractors will take on a 15-year infrastructural lease unless they can impose exceptionally high charges to recoup their investment on such a short leasehold?
How will the right hon. Gentleman avoid political interference in the management of London Transport underground if the board is to be appointed by the Greater London authority, as the Labour manifesto proposes?

Mr. Prescott: London Transport will be accountable to the assembly and the mayor. The previous Government


subjected its investment requirements to one and two-year considerations. In the proposals that I shall negotiate before it is handed over, we shall secure long-term stability in the investment programme. That will result in considerable efficiency gains. If an investment programme lasts for only one or two years and nobody knows what the third year will hold, the capital is not used efficiently. I am advised by people who should know that the new structure could result in considerable gains in efficiency and resources. We shall wait and see. We shall negotiate on those issues. I am advised that 15 years will be adequate. People are already queuing up for the contracts, so I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's advice on that.
As for uncertainty, of course the new third way of a public-private partnership raises many questions. We have rejected privatisation and are going for a new formula that will give us the best of both worlds. If the previous Administration had taken a little more time on some of their privatisation deals, the taxpayer would have been a lot better off.

Mr. Tony McNulty: Will my right hon. Friend ignore totally the curmudgeonly nitpicking from the Conservatives and the pre-pubescent whining—on time, rather than money, on this occasion—from the Liberal Democrats? Will he take it from me, as an outer London Member, that suburban commuters will welcome his statement? It is long overdue. The only lasting question that my constituents will ask is when they can get on with it and have the improved tube with a stable future that London deserves.

Mr. Prescott: I can tell my hon. Friend: they can get on with it now. That is what I have told London Transport.

Mr. Edward Davey: The Deputy Prime Minister has told the House that there will be £7 billion more investment over the next 15 years. Will he explain further how he has arrived at that figure? When the previous Government presented their proposals on public industries, they told us that their measures would produce billions of pounds of extra investment. We were often left waiting for that investment. Why is the right hon. Gentleman so confident about the figure of £7 billion?

Mr. Prescott: That is the assessment of the consultants and London Transport. They are well aware of how much investment is needed. The calculation is easy. They have said that there is £1.2 billion of disinvestment that should have been dealt with years ago. The average consideration is that £500 million or £600 million a year should be invested in the underground system. The £7 billion comes from the consultants' calculation, which has been agreed by London Transport. I have taken that as a proper figure.

Ms Margaret Hodge: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the one thing that Londoners sought from a new Labour Government was a modern, efficient, safe underground system? Does he agree that, with £500 million of new investment over the next two years and £7 billion over the next 15 years, we are setting about

achieving that? Will he assure me that, in the regulatory framework that he sets up to administer the new system, he will ensure that fares remain affordable to Londoners?

Mr. Prescott: Of course fares are important, although whatever the fare, it is difficult to get on the underground at the moment. The top priority is to secure investment so that there is extra capacity for people to travel. To encourage people to use their cars less and use public transport more, it must be comfortable and accessible. Our programme is geared to achieving that.

Sir Michael Spicer: Given the copper-bottomed financial guarantees that the right hon. Gentleman seems to be offering, and therefore the low level of risk, why are the arrangements to be outside the normal public sector borrowing rules? I realise that he may want the Paymaster General to answer that question, but perhaps he will have a go.

Mr. Prescott: This deal shows the constraints of public sector borrowing. London Underground has had to compete for resources against hospitals, schools and all the areas in which people think there is a higher priority. By adopting this private sector initiative, we will be able to use the assets and the income stream from London Transport operations to guarantee payments for long-term investment. That is normal in other countries; it is only in this country that we have chosen to operate differently. That is why other countries have better public transport systems than we do.

Mr. John McDonnell: I am sure that my right hon. Friend agrees that, having sat on the Government Benches listening to report after report of privatisation scandals in recent months, it beggars belief that anyone could urge wholesale privatisation of London Underground. However, he will be aware that a number of us favour wholesale public ownership of London Underground and would therefore welcome assurances that contracts will be under continuous review, so that if they fail, he will intervene directly, as he has elsewhere, to return contracts to public ownership and control.
We must now seize the opportunity to install new management in London Underground, which involves representatives of the work force, passengers and the community as a whole, accountable to the new strategic authority for London and committed to providing a public service and protecting our environment.

Mr. Prescott: I understand my hon. Friend's point about public ownership, but, looking back over the years, as an advocate of it, I realise that one of its great disadvantages is that it is subject to Treasury control. That has meant that services received insufficient resources. I do not think that that is in any doubt any more or a difference between parties. Even under the Greater London council—with which my hon. Friend was involved—there was a failure to get resources for investment, which was at half the level of that achieved by even a Tory Administration some years later.
My concern is to ensure adequate levels of investment. I do not think that we are likely to get that under the PSBR and Treasury rules at the moment. I have enough to say about those on other occasions. I am a practical


politician; I want investment for London Underground, and I have chosen to provide it. It will be publicly owned and publicly accountable. Indeed, the assets will still be owned by London Underground and will be returned. There is no need to worry about that. They are owned by the public sector. The contracts will last for whatever period is negotiated in order to achieve the investment, and, when they are finished, assets will be returned to the London authority.
On staff, management and labour, make no mistake that the process will propose many changes. There are not just easy options. The work force and the management will face a challenge. We will, of course, start proper discussions with them about how we implement the programme, now that I have made the statement.

Mr. Eric Forth: Does the Secretary of State agree with the excellent comments and analysis of his hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) on the radio this morning? Will the increase in finance that he has announced today bring the level of public money going to Londoners per head up to the level going to Scots per head?

Mr. Prescott: I did not hear the comments of my hon. Friend, but I have heard about them. I think that he has gone to Scotland to talk to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer about the matter.

Mr. Martin Linton: Will my right hon. Friend reassure my long-suffering constituents who use the Northern line that the end of their misery is in sight and that there is a light at the end of a very long tunnel—at one point, the longest tunnel in the world—especially as they were the first to suffer from the postponement of the track and signalling programme, which was postponed until 2005 as a direct result of the £300 million cut in the previous Government's last Budget presented by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke)? Will he ensure that everything will be done to relieve their misery and give priority to track works on the Northern line as part of the £365 million package that he has introduced?

Mr. Prescott: That was the line on which I used to travel from Clapham, and it was an uncomfortable experience at peak time. [Interruption.] I think that Conservative Members will find, if they go and have a look, that Clapham is on the underground. Travelling from there was most uncomfortable, and persuaded me more of the need to consider capacity and not simply prices.
Conservative Members endorsed the Northern line privatisation, where private money was involved—and it was a complete mess. We must offer people using the Northern line a better opportunity for the future. We must do so not only on the Northern line but for the whole London underground. In 10 months, we have produced a plan to enable us to achieve that.

Mr. James Paice: I think that the Deputy Prime Minister said that he was to take powers to determine matters over the next couple of years before the Greater London authority materialised. Although I am sure we all accept that his entrepreneurial flair will mean that those powers are used benignly and

helpfully, is not there a contradiction in giving extra powers to the Government and the Secretary of State—and his successor—which could count against the very development work and the use of private sector enterprise that he is trying to introduce?

Mr. Prescott: It is a bit rich for a member of the previous Administration, who wanted completely to privatise the underground, to talk about powers. I said in my statement that if it was necessary, in the negotiation of the contracts, to amend some of the legislation, we would do so. At the moment, London Underground has the powers. We will be looking at a Greater London authority Bill. That will give everybody an opportunity to discuss the extent of the powers and any changes that we feel it might be necessary to include.

Ms Linda Perham: I thank my right hon. Friend for taking the time to get this right. My constituents rely on eight Central line stations, some of which were under threat by the previous Government's all-out privatisation proposals, and they will welcome the proposals. The Central line has taken over from the Northern line as the misery line, mainly because of signalling problems. I look forward to the Central line, along with all the other lines, being improved under the proposals.

Mr. Prescott: It is that sort of change that we envisage in the investment programme.

Mr. David Tredinnick: The right hon. Gentleman said that the investment will lead to faster train times, but, in the list of expenditure that he has given us, nothing is said about signalling. For Leicestershire and other midlands constituents who come to London and use the Northern line, are not improvements in signalling the key to faster train times? Will he give some undertaking about signalling?
The right hon. Gentleman referred to the river boat service and proposed new services. Is it not a fact that the river boat service that was introduced some years ago has not been a success? How will he make the new service a success?

Mr. Prescott: I mentioned signalling a number of times in my statement and in answer to questions. I mentioned some improvement in the first stage of investment and the £1 billion that might do something for signalling. The real improvements will come with the £7 billion investment programme. Signalling is absolutely critical to faster trains, as is improvement of track. That was in my statement, and I invite the hon. Gentleman to read it.
There have always been problems with the river boat service. The uncertainty on the river undermined the previous systems. We are introducing more piers, which will mean more pick-up points. About four or five new piers on the river will enable more pick-up places, which are designed to integrate with the bus and underground system.
With the millennium exhibition, more people will want to travel on the river. That will provide an opportunity for sustained demand. If we can fit the service into the integrated transport system, with common, integrated ticketing, another advantage will be gained. I believe that


the service will be a legacy of the millennium dome, and will not go the way of other services, which have not had sufficient funds to continue.

Mr. Clive Efford: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his announcement. Does he agree that one of the pleasures of having a Labour Government is seeing the faces of Conservative Members who know that they should have made such statements in their 18 years in government, but were too tied up in the dogma of privatisation to be capable of doing so? Will he give a guarantee that targets set in any contract that he lets in the new programme will not leave London underground users open to the spectacle of any operator receiving a bonus for providing a lower standard of service? My right hon. Friend will be aware that under the bargain basement sell-off of British Rail, that is exactly what resulted from privatisation. Will he guarantee that the service will not suffer under private sector involvement in the future plans for London Underground?

Mr. Prescott: I do not think that we will make the same mistakes that were made with rail privatisation, because we are not following the same policy and it is not privatisation. For example, the operator will be publicly owned. It will determine the service and run it—as happens now—until it passes to the GLA in two years' time.
On the point about the competence of contractors, the usual process will be followed and there will be penalties, which will be rigidly enforced. However, I have no reason to think that that might be necessary. We will go to the negotiations and see what we have to agree to get the necessary investment.
With regard to the service, that will be our responsibility for the first two years until we pass it over to the GLA. Then, Londoners will make their own decisions on service, through their assembly and the mayor of London.

Mr. David Chidgey: I am sure that the Deputy Prime Minister is aware that one of the problems with PFI projects is that they generally attract higher costs for servicing the capital raised, compared with Government borrowing.
The right hon. Gentleman said earlier that he was looking at the possibility of congestion charging in London—he referred to parking charges, but I think that he meant that in the wider sense—and put that in the context of an integrated transport policy. Is he considering how much money could be raised as a charge on congestion or parking in London and what proportion of that would be used to finance the new capital needed for London Underground, as a quasi-public sector contribution to the PFI exercise?

Mr. Prescott: The hon. Gentleman will have to wait for the White Paper to see our judgment on those important issues, which require careful consideration and consultation. We are putting together the White Paper and we want to include those issues in our consideration of an integrated transport system.
The hon. Gentleman said that the costs of servicing capital raised through the PFI would be higher than for Government borrowing. That is true in the sense that the

Government can always borrow more cheaply, but we do not always have the resources available to do that. We must also take into account the fact that if we do not invest properly, the cost of disinvestment is very high indeed. If we put that disinvestment cost into the equation, and if long-term investment from the private sector can be guaranteed, the PFI may be a cheaper option in the long run.

Mr. Geraint Davies: May I join other Londoners in warmly congratulating my right hon. Friend? Does he agree that it is a bit rich not to have a warm reception from Conservative Members, in view of their legacy of under-investment and the privatisation and cheap sell-off of public assets?
Can my right hon. Friend give me some reassurance about the sophistication of contracts for the private sector? Will they ensure that the evolution of public transport in London—especially guided buses, trams and the possibility of road pricing technology—will be part of an integrated system for the capital? Will the contracts take into account such changes in transport and the environment?

Mr. Prescott: Those are most important issues, and they are an essential part of any integrated transport system. I hope that, through the investment in London Underground and the plans that I have announced for river services, we will have a showcase for integrated transport. That is my intention, and more will be said about that in the White Paper.

Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: The Deputy Prime Minister said that there would be a £7 billion investment in London Underground over 15 years, of which £2 billion would be invested over the next two years. That leaves a £5 billion gap, which, presumably, the right hon. Gentleman expects the private service operator to fund. In order to get a return on that huge sum of money, will not fares inevitably have to rise substantially over and above inflation over the next 15 years?

Mr. Prescott: First, I did not say that £2 billion would be invested over the next two years; I said £1 billion. The £7 billion relates to the contracts that we will let after two years, once they have been negotiated. We are saying that £7 billion investment is needed to modernise the underground system, and our advisers tell us that there is no difficulty with that. It is not simply a matter of a fare increase. There has already been a tremendous increase in the number of people using the tube. If we can achieve greater capacity, that will bring more money to the underground system. The money does not necessarily have to come from fare rises. Greater efficiencies in the system could contribute to the final solution.

Mr. Andrew Dismore: May I tell my right hon. Friend how welcome his announcement will be to my constituents who have suffered the vagaries of the Northern line for far too long? In particular, they will welcome the restoration of the track modernisation programme, which was postponed by the previous Government.
Will my hon. Friend be considering the computerised control system at Euston, which is way out of date, and the modernisation of stations on the Northern line, especially Colindale where there are even holes in the wall?

Mr. Prescott: We are all well aware of the difficulties and the obvious signs of disinvestment in the underground system. One consequence of the decision by the previous Administration to cut the investment programme for London Underground by almost 50 per cent. was that London Transport had to hold back some of the extra resources that it had planned to invest. That meant that about £100 million of investment was cancelled. I have now carried over that money from this year and added it to the £1 billion I announced. We can now get on with dealing the problems that were not dealt with previously because of the mishandling of the finance programme by the Conservative Government.

Mr. Edward Garnier: May I welcome the right hon. Gentleman's enthusiasm for the use of the River Thames as a means of transport, not least because it will mitigate the absence of an underground system in north Battersea? I hesitate to trespass on the constituency responsibilities of the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Linton), but, as a former resident of Battersea, I can confirm that we noticed the absence of an underground system, so we would very much welcome a river service there. If the right hon. Gentleman can ensure that north Battersea gets one before too long, a great many people will be grateful.
Will the right hon. Gentleman say more about the corporate structure of the new London Underground and about the split in responsibilities between the chairman or chief executive of London Underground and the future mayor of Greater London?

Mr. Prescott: I am grateful for the hon. and learned Member's comments about river services. I am sure that everyone looks forward to the development of the river, as it will unite the two banks, so that there is no longer a separation in the transport system.
On the point about corporate structure and management, we will enter discussions with the parties involved to come to a decision about that. It is clear that there will be changes throughout the system, in one form

or another. However, the hon. and learned Gentleman will have to wait to know more until I have had further discussions.

Mr. Andrew Lansley: I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman could explain a little more about the relationship between what he is proposing and any decisions that may be made by the GLA and the elected mayor two years hence. What scope will they have to revisit the issue of privatisation of the operation of services across London Underground?
Why has the right hon. Gentleman set his face against the privatisation of services? He advocates integrated transport policies, and there are many commuters into and out of London who want integration between train operating companies on the former British Rail network, with the potential to run services in and across London. That is an example of integration that the right hon. Gentleman appears to be frustrating today.

Mr. Prescott: Public opinion now is even more overwhelmingly against privatisation of the underground than it was before the general election. It made the previous Administration extremely nervous about privatisation. The evidence clearly shows that privatisation is not the way forward, and the advice we have had from consultants has confirmed that.
Privatisation of the underground would involve two or three years preparation and then, if we followed the policy of the previous Administration, selling it at a knock-down price. As it is such a disinvested system, why should we want to sell it now? That would be robbing Londoners of their previous investment in the underground system. This is the best and most practical way to modernise it—using the £1 billion, which I have mentioned, until the GLA takes over, and then using the £7 billion to get on with really modernising it. That is the best, quickest and most practical way of modernising the system so that it can be maintained and passed over to the people of London in a better state. That justifies it being publicly owned and publicly accountable.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): Order. I am sorry to disappoint some hon. Members, but we must return to the main business: the Community Care (Residential Accommodation) Bill. Mrs. Eleanor Laing had the Floor.

Community Care (Residential Accommodation) Bill

Question again proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Mrs. Laing: I should have liked to say something on behalf of my constituents in Epping Forest who depend so much on the underground, but I shall instead take up my speech where I left off. I was speaking on behalf of my constituents and expressing their concerns about the method by which they may or may not have to pay for long-term care.
Essex—unlike Wiltshire, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire described earlier—has decided to sell nursing homes into the private sector in order to raise capital to improve them and to provide greater resources to look after people who need care in their later years. I warmly welcome that decision: it means that resources will be used more efficiently. Let us hope that the county councillors of Wiltshire learn something from the county councillors of Essex.
I join other hon. Members in paying tribute to the various organisations that have helped to bring the Bill before the House, notably Help the Aged and Age Concern.
It is an important point of principle that people who work hard and save throughout their lives should not be treated unfairly compared with people who spend their earnings as they get them. It is not surprising that many people feel that they have been disadvantaged because they have worked hard, saved, put their money into their house, wanting something to pass onto their children and grandchildren. That is a perfectly respectable and understandable human feeling.
It is not surprising that many such people resent the fact that a person living next door might have, for example, not bought his council house and instead simply continued to pay rent, not put any of his own resources into looking after his house or his community, not spent money on his family, not taken any steps to save and therefore had plenty of money to spend during his earning years, only to have his bills paid for by the state. Such a situation is patently unfair and widely recognised as such.
My main worry about the effect of the policy of certain councils on people approaching their later years arises from the anxiety in which those people live because of their fear of losing their homes. A home is not just an asset or a financial figure on paper; it is very much part of a person's life and of a family's life, especially as people approach their later years.
About one in five—a large number—of older people find that they have to go into residential accommodation. Professor Hamnett, of King's college, London, in his paper, "Inheritance in Britain: the Disappearing Millions" has estimated that, in recent years, 40,000 homes have had to be sold in Britain in order to meet the costs of long-term care.
We must go further—I hope that the Government will consider the points that I have made and go further—than the Bill suggests. I hope that they will create incentives to encourage people to save by means of pensions and

other savings schemes so that they can pay for their own residential care, should that become necessary, and protect their own homes and family assets.

Mr. Tredinnick: My hon. Friend refers to some important statistics. Has she looked at other statistics on the number of elderly people going into residential care? Can we be sure that the figures are accurate, and on what basis does she make her assertions?

Mrs. Laing: I am relying on the figures of Professor Hamnett of King's college, London. I have read other studies. I cannot give my hon. Friend statistics here and now, but I am pretty certain, having examined various academic studies on this subject, as well as figures from Government Departments, that the figures to which I have referred are close to the reality of the situation.
Vast numbers of people are concerned about paying for residential care. It is partly a good-news story: so many more people are going into residential homes because, happily, people are living longer. Many of them can have a good standard of living when they go into residential homes. I am sure that we all welcome that, but there is a problem in paying for such care. It is unfortunate that the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not take up any of those issues in his Budget statement earlier this week. It should be incumbent on the Government to take steps to encourage people to make provision to pay for themselves when they go into residential care.
As I was saying before my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick) made his excellent intervention, Conservative Governments over 18 years created a property-owning democracy of a sort never seen before in western Europe. Conservative Governments gave everyone the chance to own property and to take part in what has become known as the cascade of wealth—[Interruption.] Labour Members mock, but, in talking about wealth, I do not mean riches. I mean the little nest egg that everyone in Britain now has the chance to build up for himself and to pass on—I cannot understand why Labour Members mock this idea—to their families. That is an integral part of family life stemming from general ownership of property.

Mr. Grieve: Does my hon. Friend agree that if more wealth cascaded down the generations, the balance of the need for residential care, as against the ability of families to look after their elderly relatives, might change?

Mrs. Laing: My hon. Friend makes a good point. I shall have to consider it more deeply before I can say whether I utterly agree with him. I certainly agree with him about encouraging the cascade of wealth.
I do not know why the Minister mocks the idea. I am talking about wealth, not riches. The House will understand that I am talking about the small nest egg, to which everyone is entitled if he or she has worked hard and paid tax on earnings.
I thoroughly support the principle that lies behind the Bill. When people put the money that they have earned and paid tax on into their own homes, their homes should be protected as far as possible and as far as the Exchequer and the Department of Social Services can afford. The Bill goes some way to help people when they most need it.
It is interesting that clause 1 applies to the National Assistance Act 1948 and clause 2 applies to the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968. Clause 3 explicitly states that clause 1 should extend to England and Wales only and that clause 2 should extend to Scotland only. The Bill proves that the House—this Parliament, the House of Lords and the Commons put together—is capable of making legislation for England and Wales, and for Scotland, taking into consideration two different legal systems and the different legislation that is in force in the two different parts of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Pound: On another point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to trespass on your good nature, but the hon. Lady is guilty of deviation to the extreme on this occasion.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: So far, I have found the hon. Lady to be in order, but I shall listen carefully to what she has to say.

Mrs. Laing: I am speaking precisely to the very words on the Bill. I do not believe that I am deviating at all. It is an important matter. The House is perfectly capable of making legislation—such as the legislation that will result from the Bill—that applies to different parts of the United Kingdom in slightly different ways but which has the same force. Therefore, my point is that a Parliament in Scotland and an assembly in Wales are unnecessary.

Mr. Peter Brooke: I shall be extremely brief. I shall make one point on a subject about which we are all concerned: reducing the anxieties of the elderly.
The present Opposition have on the whole been more generous in letting private Members' Bills through at half-past Two on Friday afternoons. This debate constitutes a first opportunity to speak on the Bill. Bills such as this always represent a quarry to which people can return after the event.
I have paid Sefton borough council the compliment of seeking to understand its logic. Its concern was partly with those who had made prior arrangements for themselves. Such arrangements can include purchasing a flat in a wardened block. My brief speech is based on the experience of a member of my family and the distress that selling one's home always occasions to those who go into residential care. If this obliges me to declare a personal but academic interest, I am happy to do so.
The relevant member of my family bought, at the age of 84, a flat in such a block which, I understand, was regarded as the best block in the town. I shall not embarrass the public company that built and marketed the flats by identifying it, but I gather that that process constitutes its business. When my relative died five years later, it was clear that the resale value of the flats was less than 50 per cent. of the value at which they were originally marketed, and that was in an era when the housing market, with improvements in the economy, was in much better shape than it had been five years previously.
Because of her death, my relative mercifully did not have to go into residential care, but the trauma of selling one's home is enormously exacerbated if private

arrangements for not depending on residential care—a subject in which Sefton evinced an interest—lead to so dramatic a loss of capital value. Help the Aged has been congratulated on its help in preparing the Bill and in drawing attention to this subject. It should also be warmly congratulated on setting up a national marketing scheme for the resale of such flats to make up for the failure of the contingent arrangements of the public company's programme.

Mr. Dominic Grieve: I am happy to be able to participate briefly in the debate. I can see the look of relief that has come across the Minister's face after hearing that information.

The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Mr. Ian McCartney): It is unusual for a barrister to be brief.

Mr. Grieve: Barristers can be brief. Indeed, one feature of being a barrister is that, because we are in front of a judge who can pull us up short—with perhaps even greater promptitude than you do, Mr. Deputy Speaker—which encourages brevity, we sometimes make skeleton arguments. If the Minister wants me to elaborate on that, I shall take longer.
The Bill is to be commended. The hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh), who introduced it and has steered it through the House, has undoubtedly done a considerable service.
It is interesting to note a change in the approach of Labour Members towards legislation of this kind. To be fair to Sefton borough council, although I cannot think of a good word to say about its conduct in this matter, it was simply applying a strictly financial approach without regard to the emotional suffering that it might cause elderly people in cleaning them of virtually all their assets before it was prepared to step in and help. It is interesting and noteworthy that the Bill marks a change, in that Parliament is setting a benchmark in saying that it is important that elderly people in reduced circumstances, but who nevertheless have saved up capital assets, should be able to keep some measure of those assets when the local authority steps in to help them because they are in need of care. I believe that that is right.
I made a point to my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing), who is no longer in the Chamber, about encouraging the cascading of wealth down the generations, by which I mean that people should be able to pass on some inheritance to those who follow them. That is important in setting up a nexus society that may ultimately reduce the need for institutional care. It encourages the younger generation to look after their parents and grandparents wherever possible.
It is clear that the Bill will not get round the problem of rogue borough or district councils failing to assess whether a person is in need of care and attention. I hope that that simply will not arise. The spirit of the Bill is clear. If it were to arise, the possibility of seeking judicial review would always be present.
I now come to my final remark. The Minister will have to accept that I have made probably the briefest speech in the debate. The Sefton case is an interesting example of judicial intervention in regulations. It is noteworthy that


no hon. Member has criticised the way in which the Court of Appeal came to its decision either for its logic or for the fact that the decision embodied not only legal but moral considerations. We are considering the incorporation of the European convention on human rights. It is sometimes said against the convention that human rights are a political matter on which the courts should not be able to pronounce. The Sefton case illustrates that the courts are often required to pronounce on matters that have a political dimension and they generally succeed in doing so without difficulty and without causing an excessive number of ruffled feathers among parliamentarians in this Chamber.
I reiterate my thanks to the hon. Member for Bradford, West for introducing the Bill. It is reasonable, it is short and it has commanded support on both sides of the House, which is what I have always been told a private Member's Bill ought to seek to do. It deserves to be given its Third Reading today.

Mr. Stephen Pound: I reiterate the apology made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh) for having to leave early. The reason he left says less about his respect for the House than about the length of post office queues in Bradford. He would not have left if he had had any alternative.
My hon. Friend asked me to spend the 24 hours before this morning's debate studying all available documentation on Sefton borough council—actuarial tables and details of the Acts, byelaws and judicial decisions affecting it. I have spent all night poring over tomes and volumes in anticipation of telling, forensic points reaching me from the Opposition Benches. I am relieved, perhaps grateful and possibly disappointed that Opposition Members' comments tended by the minute to be less and less to do with the subject that we are debating. We have heard about the effect of petrol duty on rural gas guzzlers, an exegesis on the Bradford wool trade and we have even wandered off into the byways of the national lottery. If these are friends of my hon. Friend's Bill, Lord protect me from my friends.
We came eventually to passion and the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing)—an association that many of us in the House would make. She referred to the passion that the Bill should engender. In conversations with my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West, I detected his passionate commitment to this vital issue and I hope that hon. Members detected it in his speech. To right a wrong is one of the noblest reasons for seeking election to the House. My hon. Friend's Bill would right a wrong; would that all of us could say at the end of our time here that we had achieved as much.
I am delighted to wind up the debate on behalf of my hon. Friend. I have not had to respond to telling speeches from Opposition Members: most of them were supportive, if a little discursive. I strongly commend the Bill to the House and to the nation.

Mr. Owen Paterson: I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh), the promoter of the Bill,

for not being present for the opening speeches. I came down from Shropshire this morning and, foolishly, thought that the statement by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions would be made first.
I strongly congratulate the hon. Member for Bradford, West on the Bill. I have a little experience in this area and should declare an interest. In 1907, a cottage hospital was built in Ellesmere by Louisa Jebb, sister of Eglantyne Jebb, the founder of Save the Children, to serve the needs of a small rural community. It was confiscated by the state when the national health service was created in 1947 and included in the round of 13 cottage hospital closures in Shropshire in 1987. The concept of the time was to concentrate NHS efforts in large district general hospitals such as those in Telford and Shrewsbury.
There was extraordinary local reaction and I became involved in the local campaign. Ellesmere was the last hospital to close, although it had only 13 beds. The Under-Secretary looks puzzled, but I am bringing the matter up to emphasise the intense feeling in small towns in rural areas about retaining facilities and keeping people near to where they live. There was fierce hostility to elderly people going to Telford or down to Shrewsbury and blocking up high-tech beds when they would have been much better kept at home.

Mr. Boateng: What has this to do with the Bill?

Mr. Paterson: I strongly support—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We are going wide of the Third Reading debate. The hon. Gentleman should not try to turn the debate into a general discussion of the health service.

Mr. Paterson: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was giving background information, because I must declare my interest. I became involved in the action group that formed a trust and raised £250,000 to buy the hospital and another £250,000 to refurbish and run it as a nursing home. I was deputy chairman of the trust and chairman of the management board that ran the nursing home until I was elected to the House.
That involvement gave me a great deal of experience, and I strongly support the Bill. I could cite numerous cases of elderly couples being forced to separate, such as a couple in the first intake into the nursing home. The lady had to go into the home because of infirmity and the husband was left on his own. They were separated for a traumatic 18 months until she died. He had run down the family finances to pay for her stay in the nursing home and ultimately had to sell their only asset—their house. He also ended up in the nursing home.
The Under-Secretary is kindly listening intently. Will he address the inflexibility of the current rules, which was picked up on by my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe)? From 6 April 1998, the Department of Social Security will contribute £318 a week to a person's nursing care; £333 a week to the care of elderly mentally infirm people; £213 a week to low dependency people and £247 a week to high dependency people in residential care; and £262 to the care of elderly mentally ill people.
We should consider the couple I mentioned. I put it to the Under-Secretary that the money would be better spent on home visits by carers. A visit by a carer to a private home costs £5 an hour. An agency might charge £6.50 an hour. Three visits might be made daily. An overnight stay might cost £5 an hour for nine hours, which is £45 a night.
My arithmetic may be wrong—perhaps it should be corrected by an education Minister—but if I am right the total would be £462 a week for a couple. Surely the best reason for spending that money would be to keep couples together in their own homes. Nevertheless, I strongly support the main drift of the Bill—the aim of raising the threshold to £16,000 so that couples are not split.
I should like, finally, to take up a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing): I think it important to ensure that assets are kept in a family and that they can be passed on to the next generation.

Mr. Patrick Nicholls: I am delighted to have the opportunity to say a few words about the merits of the Bill. First, however, let me echo the remarks of those who have welcomed the initiative taken by the hon. Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh) in introducing it. Any of us who have ever piloted a Government Bill through the House will have found it a fairly challenging experience; to take on a private Member's Bill and steer it through all its processes is a remarkable task, and the hon. Gentleman has performed it with distinction.
The hon. Gentleman is possibly one of life's pessimists. He said that he would be unable to stay because he was opening a post office. I see from his entry in Dod's that he has a majority of 3,877—considerably larger than my own majority. I should have thought that he would not feel it necessary to open a post office, but he clearly sees things differently. That is fair enough, and we all understand why he cannot be here.
As a number of hon. Members have already pointed out, there seems to be a feeling abroad that it is strange that a number of my hon. Friends want to examine more closely a Bill which, so far, has gone through all its stages without any real debate. I think I am right in saying that one organisation with an interest in the subject was slightly concerned that the Bill had been objected to formally on an earlier occasion. That happened, of course, to ensure that it would be debated. [Laughter.] The Under-Secretary of State for Health obviously thinks that, if the people have spoken, there is no need to scrutinise legislation. That is an interesting idea, but it is profoundly undemocratic. My hon. Friends and I are deeply wedded to all the principles of democracy, one of which, surely, is that a proper debate should take place.
I shall say more shortly about what the consequences would have been if the matter had not been debated. First, however, let me offer a cautionary tale to hon. Members, and also to people outside who have been concerned. Another measure went through the House with all-party agreement—very quickly, as I recall. That was the legislation relating to the Child Support Agency, which is directly relevant to today's Third Reading. The fact that the legislation was agreed by everyone meant that it was not scrutinised.
There cannot be a Member of Parliament who has not found—from his postbag, in his constituency surgeries or perhaps in the case of his friends and relations—that a

good idea that was not sufficiently scrutinised has turned out to be a nightmare in practice. I hope that the Minister will, in due course, join me in saying—after all, he is a fair-minded man on occasion—that this is an excellent Bill, but one which needed scrutiny.
There is another aspect to the Bill, which makes it slightly strange that it has received such a welcome. To an extent, it is retrospective legislation. Normally, the House would not approve of that. At first sight, not many people would feel very comfortable about the idea that a court can come to a settled view and Parliament can simply overturn that view. The fact that that has been done in this instance—and, as I recall, both Front Benches pledged themselves to introduce legislation to reverse the effect of the second judgment—says something important about the underlying principles of the Bill, and about what Sefton really meant. The underlying theme that the Court of Appeal ultimately had to deal with in Sefton was the narrow point—important to the person concerned—about an elderly person's resources being run down in a fairly callous way. That opened up the debate about the state's share of paying for the welfare of the elderly and the role of the private citizen. That debate underlies the Bill and Third Reading.
We cannot begin to assess the Bill's merits and deficiencies, to which I shall return, without addressing the conflict between what the state pays and what an individual should pay. That problem has been inherent and implicit in the welfare state since its conception. It is only fairly recently that the conflict has entered the public domain and has caused the problems that were encountered in Sefton. There are two reasons for the conflict. First, people are living a great deal longer. That is sometimes thought to be a problem for society but as somebody who intends to live for a long time, that concept is fine. However, it has some implications.
In the period between 1951 and 1996, the number of 65-year-olds increased by about 60 per cent. while those over the age of 75 increased by 136 per cent. That is a success story and we all hope to aspire to that, but it carries implications for society. We must take into account the fact that people are living much longer. There is another important but. People nowadays have vastly more resources: there is evidence of that on the Government Benches. At one time, money to leave to one's children was the province of the fairly wealthy. As a result of 18 years of Conservative government—[Interruption.] An hon. Member mouths, "We are all Tories now", but I do not accept that.
After 18 years of Conservative government an increasing number of people, who once upon a time would have died after a long and worthwhile life and left nothing to their dependants are living a great deal longer. They have assets to leave behind and they do not want the state apparently to welsh on its deal.
Underlying Sefton and implicit in some of the submissions to it, was the idea that in some way the state—the local authority, call it what we will—was reneging on a deal. That deal was accepted to be, erroneously as I shall show, that when people reached old age, having paid national insurance contributions, they were entitled to be looked after for ever and a day, whether care was needed for one year or three years, or whether people lived to the age of 100 or beyond. The problem with that is that it is based on the false premise


that, having paid national insurance contributions, people have paid for care in a nursing home, a retirement home or a hospital.

Mr. Boateng: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Nicholls: I shall gladly give way to the Minister.

Mr. Boateng: The hon. Gentleman is talking about the legacy of a Government in which he played a small, brief and not particularly distinguished part.

Mr. Nicholls: The hon. Gentleman indulges in these petty brushes to try to assert a radical agenda. I was delighted to play an all-too-brief but extremely significant part in the previous Administration. I shall deal with it in due course in my autobiography, and I shall give the hon. Gentleman the opportunity to read it so that he may know my contribution.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): Order. Let us now return to the Third Reading debate.

Mr. Nicholls: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was led astray, although I should not have been, by the Minister. I should have known better.
Sefton illustrated that the concordat between the citizen and state simply breaks down and it is for this reason. There is no doubt that what gave the applicant the moral right in the Sefton case to say, "I have paid my dues over the years. Now I should be supported," was whatever national insurance contributions had been made during that person's lifetime, but it is not the moral obligation that matters in the end. It is who is going to pay for that person's care. The trouble with national insurance—and it never ceases to amaze me how little this is understood in the public at large—is that it is not a funded scheme.
The level of health care that people receive depends not on the amount of contributions that they will have paid in their lifetime, but on the taxpayer's ability at the time they need it to fund that level of care. We have an increasingly growing and aging population, so more and more people are going to depend on the state's largesse and fewer taxpayers are going to be there to discharge that obligation daily.

Mr. Pound: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Nicholls: I will give way in just one moment. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for conceding by his intervention that I am making profound points to which he wants to refer.
The problem that society will have to face is that there will simply not be enough money by conventional means to discharge the state's obligation.

Mr. Pound: I was waiting for the hon. Gentleman to draw breath before I intervened, but, as there seemed little likelihood of his pausing, I interrupted him. He made a

remark earlier that Labour Members were mouthing the expression, "We are all Tories now." Having done a quick consultation with the massed ranks of the honest democratic socialists who sit around me, may I say that not one of us will admit to having said anything even remotely like that, so, for the sake of the record of the nation, will he either withdraw that remark or attempt to pin it on someone?

Mr. Nicholls: The hon. Gentleman has made a contribution that has been noted by the hon. Member for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland), the Government Whip, and an off-message remark. I will not get taken too far down that road. The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) has wrecked what might have been a promising parliamentary career. I compliment him for his bravery. The interesting thing that one should mention is that the Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry, the hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney), described himself as a socialist Member of Parliament on his headed notepaper before the last election.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I repeat what I said earlier: can we now please return to the Third Reading?

Mr. Nicholls: I am sorry. This is the problem about taking interventions and I must apologise for it.
Going back to the Sefton judgment, there was no great surprise that the matter was going to come before the courts in due course because of the underlying problem about how the state discharges its responsibility to those within its care.
There is another reason why, to an extent, the Sefton judgment was not at all surprising. I wondered whether my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) was going to go on to that point. He said that, in the debate so far, we had not examined in any great detail the way in which the Court of Appeal had handled the judgment. There is something in that.

Mr. Garnier: I know that my hon. Friend was listening intently to my remarks earlier, when I intended to do precisely that: to analyse what the Court of Appeal had said. Unfortunately and perfectly correctly, Mr. Deputy Speaker advised me to return more closely to the Bill. Although I had a desire to analyse the judgment, unfortunately, the rules of the House prevented me from doing so.

Mr. Nicholls: It is clear that my hon. and learned Friend and I are, as it were, at a crossroads in relation to that point. Whereas he was moving away from the point in hand, I am moving towards it.
The interesting thing about the Court of Appeal's judgment was that this problem had not arisen before. If one considers the words of the statute, one is bound to ask why some inventive council had not looked at section 22 of the National Assistance Act 1948 and said to itself, "This is the sort of thing that we might be able to exploit," if I can put it like that, "to be able to avoid our responsibilities." When preparing for the debate, I was interested in the fact that there had been no attempt to use that provision.
It is obvious from the judgment—and I refer to the report of it by Lawtel—that the Court of Appeal was dealing with the age-old problem of deciding where it wanted to be and then plotting the course to get there. The judgment concluded:
It was clear from the evidence that Sefton accepted that the applicant, Mrs Blanchard met its own threshold requirements as a person in need of care and attention. Notwithstanding this, what it was seeking to do was to say that because of its lack of resources it was not prepared to meet the duty which was placed upon it by the section. This it was not entitled to do.
When one sets that ruling in the context of the facts and the judgment as a whole, it is clear that the Court of Appeal was saying that it would not put up with the implications of the Sefton case and would do its level best to deal with the problem.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: My hon. Friend makes a point that is highly pertinent to the Third Reading of the Bill, in which we are approving of the Bill's effect, as far as it goes, but are seeking to clarify where that leads us. In the Court of Appeal judgment, Lord Woolf says that the local authority
was not entitled to do that. Once the authority was satisfied that Mrs Blanchard was 'in need of care and attention' unless it could rely on the words 'which is not otherwise available to them' it was under an obligation to fulfil its duty and a lack of resources was no excuse.
The point that is so relevant to Third Reading is that the local authority—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This intervention is far too long.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: May I conclude my point?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Very, very briefly.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: The question is whether the Bill will cover the point exposed by Lord Woolf.

Mr. Nicholls: No, it will not, and my right hon. and learned Friend is correct. The Bill will also not cover another point. Sefton sought to exploit the provision on resources in section 22. My reading of the Bill is that it contains nothing that would stop an unscrupulous council, under the earlier part of section 22, refusing to make an assessment until the person's resources had been wound down to such an extent that the exercise would become otiose.

Mr. Boateng: No.

Mr. Nicholls: I hope that the Minister is prepared, when he winds up, to do more than say no and to address the points that have been made by solicitors, barristers and Queen's counsel sitting on the Opposition Benches. If those points are not addressed, we will have produced a Bill that we all welcome—we will pat ourselves on the back for having done the job that we are sent here to do—but we will have failed. Scrutiny is necessary, and we had to have a Third Reading not to hold matters up, but to ensure that when the Bill is enacted—as I truly hope it will—it is in a fit and proper state. In my short remarks, I hope that I have played my part in flagging up for another place the fact that the Bill is good up to a point,

but that much more would could be done on it. We look to the Minister not to indulge the petty brutalisms that he so much enjoys, but to answer the debate. If he did so, it would be the first time that I have heard him do so, but it would be a refreshing experience.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Paul Boateng): Prevarication and delay are part of the armoury of Opposition. Having listened to Opposition Members today, I see that they have not yet learnt how to use that armoury as effectively as they might. They have certainly chosen an inappropriate target. Right hon. and hon. Members who attend the House on a Friday will have noticed, on previous occasions when the Bill has come before the House for consideration, that objection has been made time and again by Opposition Members. It is no wonder that the innocent onlookers who have written to the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls) have suggested that some Opposition Members perhaps wish the Bill other than well.

Mr. Gray: rose—

Mr. David Maclean: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Boateng: No, I will not give way to the right hon. Gentleman. He has objected in the past to the Bill without giving reasons for doing so, and there is no need for him to give reasons now.

Mr. Gray: rose—

Mr. Nicholls: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Boateng: No, I shall finish my point. Conservative Members know very well what has been going on in the Bill's passage. The correspondents of the hon. Member for Teignbridge smelt a rat, but they—the innocent onlookers—smelt the wrong animal: they should have smelt a fox, because that is what has been behind the delay and prevarication characterising—

Mr. Gray: rose—

Mr. Nicholls: Will the hon. Gentleman give way now?

Mr. Boateng: No; we have to move on.

Mr. Nicholls: Will he give way?

Mr. Boateng: No. The hon. Gentleman will have plenty of time, but not quite now.
The delay and prevarication—I will be the first to say it—has taken some amusing and entertaining forms. If one has nothing better to do with one's time, it might even have been quite pleasant to watch on the cable channel that devotes itself to such matters.

Mr. Garnier: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Boateng: But it would be a sad person who had nothing better to do.

Mr. Garnier: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman heard you,


Mr. Deputy Speaker, allowing me to make a point of order, which is this. The hon. Gentleman has had the Floor for three or four minutes and has yet to address himself to the Bill's content. I wonder whether I could ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to persuade him to do so, not least because he has made some abusive—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Those are entirely matters for the Chair to decide.

Mr. Boateng: I am much obliged, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was doing Opposition Members the courtesy of responding to them. Perhaps I was misguided, and should have ignored them completely by ploughing on? No, I wanted to show them—especially the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier)—the courtesy of giving them a response. In this debate, the hon. and learned Gentleman has been his usual, elegant self—I refer more to his figure of speech than to any other aspect of his presentation—treating us to a useful tour de force on the case. In its way, that was quite helpful. I am not sure that it progressed the debate very far, but it was elegantly done.
Other speeches were less elegant, but raised points that were undoubtedly of interest to those making them. If they were mined with a certain zeal, they might even provide something for local newspapers, as they frequently seemed to have some sort of constituency content. However, one or two points made in the debate deserve a serious response. I should like, very briefly, to tackle those.
There is a real issue, which is of the utmost importance and seriousness, which is why all hon. Members owe my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West (Mr. Singh) a debt of gratitude in raising the issue in the House. We particularly commend the role of Help the Aged and others in bringing some relief to those who suffered from the actions—or apprehension of possible action—of Sefton borough council and from the uncertainty surrounding the subsequent case.
Safeguarding a set amount of capital is of considerable importance to anyone entering residential or nursing home care and their families. Most people entering such care are very elderly and vulnerable and have saved all their lives to prepare for their old age. The Government certainly believe that we owe it to those senior citizens to protect a modest amount of their life savings and/or proceeds from the sale of the family home from being swallowed up entirely in care home fees. That can matter so much to older people, for whom being able to pass something on to their families or having a small nest egg for a rainy day is a source of pride. We do not refer to that as a cascade of wealth; it is the modest outcome of a life of prudence which ought to be recognised and rewarded, and certainly ought not to be penalised in the way it was by Sefton's actions, which, by taking away the last small amount of savings, threatened self-respect,

independence and a sense of self-worth on the part of vulnerable individuals. We are determined that that should be protected. Indeed, that is why we welcome the Bill, and I am glad that my Department has been able to be of some assistance to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West, as he graciously recognised. That is why I can give an assurance to Opposition Members who raised some concerns as to whether the Bill would achieve the purpose for which it was intended. I feel sure—and there is no reason to believe otherwise—that this modest and uncontroversial measure will achieve the purpose for which it was intended.

Sir Nicholas Lyell: I am grateful to the Minister, and I am encouraged that he feels sure that the Bill will succeed. Do I take it from him that he believes that this short Bill deals not merely with the narrow point in the Sefton case, but overcomes the rather broader case that I highlighted earlier so that, in future, a local authority will not be able to get out of its responsibilities by telling elderly people that they must spend any savings between £16,000 and £1,500 on home helps, for example, before they can be taken into residential care? Will the Minister clarify his view on that?

Mr. Boateng: I am happy to do just that. As Opposition Members will understand as many of them were in government at the time, although we maintain that it has always been clear that the intention of the policy was to do just that, if we left the Court of Appeal's judgment to stand on its own, there would always be the danger that some local authority would seek to use the law—either by leapfrogging the Court of Appeal and asking the House of Lords to revisit the matter or by some other ingenious attempt to get round what was a fine and useful judgment on the part of a distinguished court, as the hon. and learned Member for Harborough said—to thwart what we maintain is the intention of Parliament and what we understand to have been the policy underpinned by the decision of the Court of Appeal.
We already apprehend—which is why we welcome the Bill—from anecdotal evidence provided by Help the Aged and Age Concern that some local authorities are seeking to ignore the capital limits by using waiting lists, as the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Sir N. Lyell) suggested they might. That could result in elderly and disabled people being forced to enter residential care to spend any capital savings below the limit of £16,000 to pay for their care. That is why we felt it necessary to ensure that that should not happen by writing it into the law, as the Bill does.
The Bill makes clear the policy intention that anyone entering residential accommodation should be able to retain a nationally set amount of their capital, as determined by Parliament. Clause 1 amends section 21 of the National Assistance Act 1948 so that local authorities will have to disregard a person's capital up to the limit set out in the regulations when considering whether care and attention are "otherwise available" to them. That meets the point raised by Conservative Members, while retaining Parliament's right to review the £16,000 limit, which should not and will not be fixed in stone. That is important.
We are satisfied that the Bill serves a modest but useful purpose. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, West is to be congratulated on bringing it before the House.


We all understand why he is unable to be with us as the Bill reaches its final stages. The House has given the Bill a thorough investigation and runaround.

Mr. Nicholls: Examination.

Mr. Boateng: It certainly cannot be said that the Bill has passed without examination. All reasonable points have been satisfied. We wish the Bill well and a speedy entry into law.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.

Employment Rights (Dispute Resolution) Bill [Lords]

As amended (in the Committee), considered.

New clause 9

MATTERS PROVED ON EVIDENCE BEFORE THE TRIBUNAL

'.—In proceedings brought before tribunals established under the Employment Tribunals Act 1996, issues in dispute between the parties shall not be treated as if proved, or not proved, unless the Tribunal concludes that they are so proved, or not proved, on the basis of the evidence presented to the Tribunal.'.—[Mr. Lansley.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Andrew Lansley: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): With this, it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 1, in clause 6, page 4, line 39, leave out from beginning to end of line 45.

Mr. Lansley: We shall have further opportunities to congratulate the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Healey), but I do not want to proceed without thanking him on behalf of all those who support the Bill for the time, trouble and expertise that he has brought to steering it through the House. Lord Archer of Sandwell introduced it in another place, where it underwent constructive discussion and amendment. It has been amended in Committee and we now have the first substantive opportunity to discuss some issues that arise from it. I hope that we can do that crisply and effectively, without undermining its cross-party support.
The new clause and the amendment would provide that when employment tribunals have to decide matters of fact or issues presented to them, they will conclude that those issues are proved, or not proved, in the light of the evidence presented to them and, as is customary for such tribunals, on the balance of probability. The central principle is that the balance of probability—not proof beyond reasonable doubt—is a proper test in a dispute between parties.
In some circumstances, which I shall touch on briefly, the Bill and other legislation dealing with disputes brought before employment tribunals—as they will be renamed—undermine the principle of neutrality between the parties, imposing obligations on the employment tribunal to regard certain matters as assumed or to be judged not on the balance of probability but as proved unless the contrary is established. That is to undermine what ought to be the basis of justice that many people perceive when they present their disputes dispassionately to be decided in a hearing.
That will occur, for example, under the National Minimum Wage Bill, which will bring a substantial new class of actions before tribunals. The Bill requires employment tribunals to make several assumptions, such as that a person making a complaint be regarded as qualified for the national minimum wage, and that a person making a complaint that they have not been paid the national minimum wage has indeed not been paid it. In such circumstances, the Bill requires employment


tribunals to assume that the complaint is proved unless the employer is able to establish the contrary. A decision will not be made on the evidence or on the balance of probabilities. I shall not dwell on that, because we have had the opportunity to debate the merits of that provision in other legislation.
It would be much to the advantage of the employment tribunal system generally if tribunals were required under this Bill always to examine issues of fact, and make decisions not on the basis of assumptions or bias but on the balance of probabilities and in the light of evidence presented.
I am afraid that there have already been several instances where such a principle has been undermined. For example, under both race and sexual discrimination legislation, it is assumed that complaints are effectively proved unless the employer is able to assert otherwise and refute the complaint with evidence to the contrary. The new clause would not undermine cases presented to employment tribunals even in such difficult and often vexatious circumstances, because there is nothing to stop employment tribunals drawing inferences from the evidence, as long as to do so seems, on the evidence, to be justified and the employment tribunal is able to exercise its judgment on the balance of probabilities.
If the employment tribunal is to make a general assumption about the conduct of employers or circumstances in which racial or sexual discrimination might occur by inference rather than on specific evidence or context, it is entirely possible for the employment tribunal to continue to apply presumption, but to do so not as a response to legislative injunction that it should, effectively, be biased, but on the basis of evidence and the probabilities that it assesses. By their very nature, tribunals rest on the judgment not only of lawyers but of lay members.
Under the Bill and related national minimum wage legislation, the operation of tribunals is moving towards the reflection of the burden of proof directive, which the Community is wishing on us, such that employers will be regarded as engaging in sexual discrimination unless they can prove the contrary. That seems a pretty damaging presumption.
Amendment No. 1 relates precisely to that point, but is concerned with a very particular instance. Clause 6(3) refers to circumstances where somebody makes a complaint about the refusal of an employer to deduct union dues that relate to a political fund contribution. Where such a complaint is made, the employer would have to satisfy the tribunal that the reason for not making such a deduction was connected to matters other than the duty to deduct the political contribution. The employer has therefore to prove the contrary of the assumption made in the legislation. Amendment No. 1 would delete such an assumption.
The purpose of this group of amendments is to touch on the issues surrounding burden of proof and to try to establish in the Bill, in a more concrete way, that the intention is that parties should bring their disputes before a tribunal on the basis that it will exercise a neutral principle—that of examining a case on the basis of the evidence presented. We must disapply some of the other

provisions in the Bill that would result in employers being regarded as guilty even before the evidence has been presented and proved.
On that basis, I commend the new clause and the amendments to the House.

Mr. John Healey: I welcome the debate on new clause 9 and amendment No. 1, but not the reasons that lie behind them. The tabling of 10 new clauses and more than 50 amendments suggests that the purpose of Conservative Members is to impede rather than to improve the Bill. That has less to do with this Bill and more to do with another Bill which, like a will-'o the-wisp, will disappear before their eyes next Friday.
What will not disappear is the widespread desire for my Bill—as it stands, without new clause 9 or amendment No. 1—to reach the statute book. The Bill has had a long gestation and very thorough pre-parliamentary consultation—including on the question of burden of proof before tribunals, which is the subject of the new clause and the amendment. Employers want the Bill, unions want the Bill, the Tribunal Service wants the Bill and the 100,000 people who, by the year 2000, are projected to put cases to tribunals, need the Bill.
I was impressed by the genuine interest in and the strong level of support for the Bill, including on questions covering burden of proof, that I found in personal discussions in the run up to the Bill with the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, the Trades Union Congress, the Confederation of British Industry and the new president of the Tribunal Service, Mr. John Prophet—who, I am happy to say, hails from Yorkshire and was previously regional chairman of the Yorkshire tribunal service. All understand that the Conservative party supports the Bill. Today will be a test of that support—a test of whether Conservative Members mean what they say or whether, as the early signs suggest, they are more interested in manoeuvres to delay the Bill than in helping employers and individuals to get a better system for settling disputes and differences.
New clause 9 has its roots in the National Minimum Wage Bill. It may help hon. Members if I briefly explain the background. There are few hon. Members who are as familiar with that Bill as the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley). Clause 28 provides, for the purposes of the National Minimum Wage Bill, that an employee is a worker unless the employer can prove otherwise. It also provides that it is presumed that an employee is being paid less than the national minimum wage unless the employer can prove otherwise.
In Committee and in the House, during the long hours of debate on that Bill, the Opposition spoke to a number of amendments they had tabled to probe the issue. I fear that the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire is returning yet again to the subject. It is surely sensible that the burden of proof should rest with employers. After all, it is the employer who has access to all the information and proof necessary to show the tribunal that the person is a worker and how much he is being paid. It is the employer who holds all the necessary information about


remuneration, national insurance records and pay-as-you-earn. It is the employer who is responsible for the contract of employment.

Mr. Peter Atkinson: If it is a question of an employer not deducting union contributions, surely the employee, of all people, would know whether or not his wages included that deduction.

Mr. Healey: The hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) and his hon. Friends start from a misapprehension about the nature of the burden of proof. We are not talking about a presumption of guilt or culpability; it is a question of who is best placed to settle a dispute about the facts, one way or the other. Surely it must be right that the party with access to information should have responsibility for proving its validity. Surely that approach makes common sense and is practical and correct. It does not contain the in-built bias to which the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire referred or any presumption of guilt before proceedings get under way.

Mr. Lansley: I shall not replay the whole argument, but does not the hon. Gentleman recall that the national minimum wage legislation makes it clear that all the information in the hands of the employer can, by law, under pain of penalty, be taken out of the hands of that employer and given to an enforcement officer? The employer does not have the only access to the records and information.

Mr. Healey: That is correct, but the source of information is the employer. In such circumstances, it makes practical sense for the employer to hold the principal burden of proof where facts are disputed.
It is not simply the national minimum wage that is at stake here. New clause 9 would affect the way in which tribunals operate in a number of other cases. Contrary to the assertion of the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire, under current legislation, in most cases tribunals require one of the parties to prove his case to them; they require one of the parties to undertake the burden of proof.
Usually, that burden of proof rests with the employee. For example, in unfair dismissal claims, it is for the employee to prove that he is an employee and that he has been unfairly dismissed. However, in certain limited circumstances, that burden rests with the employer. For example, under section 98(1) of the Employment Rights Act 1996, it is for the employer to show the reason for a dismissal and that it falls within one of the reasons under which dismissal is justified. If the employer satisfies those requirements, under section 98(4) of the same Act it is for the tribunal to establish whether the dismissal was fair or unfair. On the ground of reasonableness, the burden of proof in that case is neutral.
I have given three examples of the range of burden of proof under current legislation. Essentially, it is a way of directing the tribunal's attention to the most appropriate source of information. I dwelt on that issue and have perhaps given a fuller explanation than was needed in the hope of anticipating and answering questions that Conservative Members may have on the new clause. The burden of proof proposals in the Bill are the same as those contained in the legislation produced by the Conservative party when it was in power and which were put out to wide consultation in 1996.
Amendment No. 1 makes changes to clause 6, which deals with cases where a worker alleges that his employer has wrongly deducted a political fund contribution or has wrongly refused to deduct union subscriptions from pay. The purpose of the clause is to transfer the jurisdiction for such hearing cases from a county or sheriff court to the tribunal. That is its only purpose. Since the Trade Union Act 1984, when, as Conservative Members will know only too well, the current law on political funds was established, it has been for employers to prove that any refusal to deduct union subscriptions was unconnected with the action of a person to withdraw from paying the political levy.
In other words, it is for the employer to prove that his intentions and motives are in accordance with the law. Amendment No. 1 would remove a long-standing arrangement. It would, in effect, shift the burden of proof on to the worker. It would be difficult, therefore, for the employee to divine his employer's motives or underlying intentions. It would make it difficult, if not impossible, for a worker to prove such a case. That cannot be reasonable.
Neither new clause 9 nor amendment No. 1 has my support or the Government's. I hope that Conservative Members will seriously consider not pressing either the new clause or the amendment.

Mr. Edward Garnier: I do not want to detain the House for very long, but I want to highlight some of my concerns. When I first read the new clause of my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), I was minded not to support him, not least because I found it somewhat difficult to cope with the English. If I may say so, I consider the clause to be inelegantly drafted. I hope that my hon. Friend will not take that as a personal criticism.
I fully understand the purpose behind the new clause. Having listened to what my hon. Friend had to say in explanation of it, I am more persuaded to accept the arguments that lie behind it. I am not convinced by the argument of the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Healey). I congratulate him, of course, on bringing the Bill before the House. I am not yet convinced that his argument on the burden of proof meets the legitimate concerns expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire.
I fully accept that there are different types of case where the burden of proof may rest on the plaintiff, the complainant or the respondent. In some instances, the position is neutral. Under the current system, the law accepts that the burden of proof is not a static concept.
I suggest to the hon. Member for Wentworth and to my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire that, by and large, in civil cases—let us for present purposes assume that employment tribunals are related to civil and not criminal law—the tribunal is not too fussed about where the burden of proof lies. It is far more interested in the evidence and how that evidence can be applied to the relevant law. With great respect to both the hon. Gentleman and to my hon. Friend, I do not intend to get too hung up on where the burden of proof should lie in any given dispute. I believe that the courts are capable of assessing what is important and what is not and reaching a fair and just conclusion.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire is right to point out through his new clause the creeping movement away from placing the duty on the person


making a complaint to satisfy the court that his complaint is made out. I accept that in continental jurisdictions, especially when dealing with criminal law, the defendant—the accused person in a criminal case—must satisfy the court that he is innocent before the court will be prepared to acquit him. That is not our tradition. Our tradition is worth investigating to see why we have it, and it is worth examining before we overturn it wholesale.
I fully accept that the hon. Member for Wentworth is not seeking wholesale to overturn the system that we have come to respect on the burden of proof. However, I urge caution on the House. The new clause highlights—and clause 6 amply demonstrates—yet another example of where the burden of proof is moving away from the person making the complaint to the person who is required to answer it. We must remember that the complainer is a volunteer. He is the one who brings the proceedings. He brings the machinery of law to bear. It is the defendant, the respondent or the employer who is there, as it were, involuntarily. It is unjust that an involuntary party to a dispute should have to deal with the burden of proof.

Mr. Edward Leigh: It seems to me that the amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) is otiose. I wonder whether I can get some free legal advice from my hon. and learned Friend, as he speaks with great knowledge on these matters. The definition in the "Oxford Companion to Law" says:
The basic rules are that a party asserting an affirmative must prove it, and that a party relying on a fact peculiarly within his own knowledge must establish it. The onus of proof may shift at various stages in a case.
Nothing in the Bill as drafted goes contrary to what is in the "Oxford Companion to Law".

Mr. Garnier: I know that there is a tradition at the Bar that we help each other out, but I am certainly not giving my hon. Friend any free advice. I am not sure whether the point he makes assists or hinders our discussion. Unless the Bill makes it clear, the usual rules will apply.
Clause 6(3) specifically says that it falls on the employer to satisfy the burden of proof. There is an express change in where the burden of proof lies.
I fully accept that, under the current law that deals with the recovery of assets of criminals who have already been convicted of drug crime, the burden is on the convicted criminal to demonstrate that what he owns or what he has is not the fruit of any criminal activity.
The constitutional difference is that that man has already been convicted. I think that I am right in saying that the convict, having been convicted under the traditional system, whereby he is innocent until proved by the prosecution to be guilty beyond all reasonable doubt, has to demonstrate that his assets are not the fruit of criminal activity. [Interruption.]
I am not sure that the mutterings from Ministers are terribly helpful, as they may not be well informed. If the Minister cares to respond on behalf of the Government Whip, I am happy to be corrected.
The hon. Member for Wentworth dealt with section 98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. He is right, but all he demonstrates is that the law is fluid and adjusts itself to meet the circumstances of a given case.
The short point that I make to my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire, apart from the rather pompous remark about the English of his new clause, is that I congratulate him on highlighting an important issue. The burden of proof is not something which we should lightly move around or dispense with without the most careful thought.

Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: My hon. and learned Friend is making an extremely important point. Burden of proof is even more important in relation to tribunals and arbitration because there is no appeal on those except on a point of law, whereas if it were a normal case in the courts, recourse to appeal would be readily available.

Mr. Garnier: That is another point which the House is entitled to bear in mind. I shall not develop it now, as a number of hon. Members wish to speak. I am simply highlighting the issues between the hon. Member for Wentworth and my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire. I trust that, before the Bill goes much further, a good deal more thought will be given to that question.

Mr. Owen Paterson: I congratulate the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Healey) on bringing the Bill this far on behalf of Lord Archer of Sandwell. It is a great privilege to introduce a private Member's Bill.
I strongly urge the House to support new clause 9. I should declare an interest, as I had been in industry all my life until 1 May. I regret to inform the House that employers are disillusioned about their chances in industrial tribunals, and that leads to the nub of the new clause: there must be no dilution or weakening of the mechanism by which proof is brought to a tribunal.
We have had an interesting contest between learned lawyers on the Opposition side. I want to give the House two or three examples of real life. The current system is unsatisfactory. A company that I know well had a redundancy programme. One employee was made redundant, along with a large number of others. He had worked satisfactorily for a long time and there had never been any complaint about him. Simply, the world market had changed, demand had dropped and a substantial number of people sadly had to be made redundant.
In the course of the redundancy programme, things changed. The employee was called back in, given a personal interview by the managing director, and offered a job. The managing director kept a written diary of events every day. He wrote down that the interview had taken place, and an offer was made in writing at the same level of remuneration. Amazingly, the company was sued for unfair dismissal and, rather than go through with the tribunal, it settled out of court. That cost the company several thousand pounds. On the strength of that, several others in the programme pulled off the same trick.

Mr. Healey: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could explain how his example relates to the burden of proof. I made it clear that, in unfair dismissal cases, the primary burden of proof is on the employee rather than the employer. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that runs contrary to the points being made by his hon. Friends?

Mr. Paterson: The point that I am trying to make is that the current system is not entirely satisfactory. The


new clause tabled by me and my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) will prevent any further dilution. I shall give a couple more examples in a second. I am concerned that the burden is slipping more and more onto the employer to prove that he is not guilty, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Gamier) has said.
An employee of a business that I know in the modular building sector stole some wire. He admitted it to the personnel director. He was dismissed on the spot, as per the rules agreed by the work force and the company. Amazingly, he went to a tribunal and, because there were no witnesses when he was interviewed by the personnel director, he won the case. A self-confessed thief received compensation of £6,000, which seems bizarre. It is most disheartening for employers.
In another company in the telecommunications industry, an employee had an appalling attendance record. It was a big, well-organised business. It was unionised. The union did not support the plaintiff's case. The man had gone through all the rigmarole of verbal and written warnings and was dismissed because he had not provided a medical certificate as per the rules laid down by the company. The medical certificate turned up seven days after he had been dismissed. He took the company to a tribunal. Great analysis was made of the stamp and the time of posting. Common sense would say that the employee had a weak case, but, again, he won. Common sense suggested that right was not on his side, but the tribunal went against the company. The matter is critical. Proof in such cases depends on all the evidence being presented. Our new clause requires that it be provided.
The other massive disadvantage to employers is that a date is fixed for a tribunal. If members of the management cannot attend, another date is arbitrarily fixed on which members of the management have to attend.
A senior salesman in the robotics industry was made redundant by a sales director, who then went to the United States on a three-month secondment. The salesman complained, the tribunal laid down a date for a hearing, and the company had to decide whether to bring the sales director back from the United States to attend the tribunal. Tribunals usually start at 10 am, and sometimes run over into the next day, so the sales director might have had to stay in the United Kingdom for two days before flying back to the United States. The case could have taken up a whole week of a senior sales director's time.
1.30 pm
The case was dropped, and settled outside the tribunal. For the company, it was not worth the bother of bringing the sales director back from abroad. Cases involving production staff are much worse, because several senior managers may have to attend a tribunal, which might take up more than a day of their time if they are not called until late afternoon on the opening day. The cost of tribunals to continuous process industries can be horrendous, because senior technicians have to be away from work. Managers, especially those in smaller companies, are worried that going to tribunal is not worth the candle. Therefore, they settle out of court, which cannot be right.
The alternative is a civil court, but such proceedings take too long. A tribunal can pay a maximum compensation of £25,000, so senior executives are forced to go to law and employ the services of people such as

my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough and my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh). Civil court proceedings are far too costly and take far too much time, so I am in favour of the tribunal system. I strongly support new clause 9, because it is vital to provide maximum evidence if employers are not to become disillusioned with the Tribunal Service.

Mr. Anthony Steen: When I was asked to take on this Front-Bench job for today—

Mr. Graham Allen (Lord Commissioner to the Treasury): A long overdue promotion.

Mr. Steen: That is absolutely right.
It is an honour and a privilege to have been asked to take on this Front-Bench job. The only snag is that hon. Members have ensured that I have not spoken until 1.31 pm, knowing that the debate would end by 2.30 pm. They had a different agenda: they wanted to give me the honour and privilege of sitting on the Front Bench without having the opportunity to hear me speak.
My contribution will be short, but pithy. I want Labour Members to realise that we not only support the Bill and want it to go through the House as effectively and efficiently as possible but were designing such a Bill before the unfortunate events of 1 May. It is no good their thinking that we are opposed to the Bill and are trying to talk it out. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Hon. Members will appreciate the quality of the speeches and arguments of my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Gamier). Conservative Members are engaged in high-quality debate, which may be why so many Labour Members are absent: they may feel that the debate is of such high quality that they cannot grasp the arguments.
I am glad that the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Healey) is present. He clearly can follow the debate, although he may be struggling a little.
The relationship between employer and employee can be difficult and in a civilised society it is important to have an effective system for the hearing and satisfying of grievances. There is, however, a certain irony in our legislating for a quicker, cheaper and less formal way of removing the burden from the system of tribunals—which was itself a way of removing pressure from the courts. We hope that we shall not have to devise a system to remove pressure from voluntary arbitration. That is what the Bill is about, but new clause 9 deals with the burden of proof—an issue which strikes at the root of our legal system.
This country can proudly say that a man is presumed innocent until he is proved guilty. That is what the new clause is about: it is about ensuring that the employee is not in a privileged position as against the employer; it is about producing neutrality. I understand that, without the new clause, the employee will be privileged: it will be presumed that he is innocent and the employer is guilty. That is why members of my party are so keen for the new clause to be accepted. Although we support the Bill—and, perhaps, have been the architects of it over many years—there is growing concern, as can be heard, that this problem needs to be put right.

Mr. Leigh: I have some difficulty with my hon. Friend's argument. Traditionally, the whole point of the


tribunals that we are discussing has been their informality and accessibility. I must tell my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), with respect, that the wording of his new clause could benignly be described as dense or difficult to understand, and that it could even be described as near gobbledegook. How will it further the informality and accessibility of tribunals?

Mr. Steen: It is always a joy to see my hon. Friend in the Chamber—although on this occasion I would have preferred him not to be present.
My answer to my hon. Friend is simple. If I may say so, I do not think that he entirely understands the thrust of the Bill, which, as I understand it, is to provide an informal arbitration arrangement. The industrial tribunal—which is being renamed—is just one of the methods that an employee can use in an attempt to claim his rights. Employers have rights as well, however.
The Bill provides three ways in which an employee can claim his rights. First, he can use the system that his company may have for dealing with disputes. Many large companies have their own internal processes. That way of seeking redress is very informal. The employee approaches his company, with or without the help of the union, and presents his problem. Secondly, with the agreement of his employer, the employee can ask for arbitration. The whole point of the Bill is to enable employees to take advantage of an informal arrangement simply because the industrial tribunal has become too formal. What was established as an informal procedure has become over-formal. All that my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire seeks to do is correct the burden of proof in relation to more formal proceedings. I suggest that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), whose skill, intelligence and ingenuity are respected in all parts of the House, considers the Bill in the round and does not worry too much about the burden of proof provision in the new clause. I hope that he is satisfied with that answer.
I am concerned about the time that will be available to debate the excellent amendments and new clauses that have been skilfully and responsibly formulated by my hon. Friends. It would be discourteous to the House to say more on the new clause. We are debating a splendid Bill. We got it right and the Government have taken it on and, perhaps, made some changes. The new clause would make it even better. If the Government cannot accept the rather skilful, but perhaps not entirely clear, wording of the new clause, perhaps my hon. Friend will withdraw it on the basis of the Government's agreeing to produce better wording.

The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Mr. Ian McCartney): I welcome the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) to the Dispatch Box. Over the past 11 years, his attempts to get there have ended in abysmal failure and I am pleased that on this occasion, albeit for a short time, he is able to speak from the Opposition Front Bench. I hope he gets an opportunity to do that more often so that I can engage in debates with him—as I have for many hours in Committee.
As the hon. Gentleman said, the Bill's proposals were put out for public consultation by the previous Administration, but they failed to act. That has been left

to us. We have the full support of the Confederation of British Industry, the Institute of Directors and employee and employer organisations throughout the country. The previous Government put the burden of proof provision in the proposal that went to consultation and was accepted in principle.
The hon. Gentleman said that the Conservatives got the Bill right when they were in government. It is therefore nonsense to ask us to amend a clause which, under the previous Government's consultation, was accepted by both sides of industry as an acceptable way to proceed.
Hon. Members are under a misapprehension: the Bill is not a threat to employers. There is no presumption of guilt. The hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) got it right in the best and shortest summing up that I have heard in the House in 11 years: the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) was talking gobbledegook. I can put it no better than that. He and I spent some time debating the National Minimum Wage Bill and it is obvious that he is not prepared to forget the fact that, despite his attempts to encourage us to do so, we were not prepared to change the concept of the burden of proof as it relates to that Bill or to this one. It does no more and no less than identify for the purposes of the process who is best responsible for providing factual information on which decisions are based. I ask hon. Members to resist new clause 9 and to leave the Bill as it stands, because, as I have said, it has the support of both sides of industry.

Mr. Lansley: I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) was criticising the drafting of new clause 9. In that respect, I fear that I am not a lawyer and perhaps did not explain the matter well enough. However, the point, which was made in the debate, is that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) made plain, there will be a natural presumption for the burden of proof to be established in tribunals or courts on the basis of the evidence. Increasingly, and in too many cases, the burden of proof rests on one party and a presumption is required of the tribunals by way of statutory injunction rather than on the basis of the evidence that is presented by the two parties.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Healey) for the spirit in which he contributed to the debate. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 2

DETERMINATIONS WITHOUT A HEARING OR FULL HEARING

Mr. Garnier: I beg to move amendment No. 14, in page 2, leave out lines 7 to 10.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 3, in page 2, line 9, leave out
'(whether or not they have subsequently withdrawn it)'.
No. 16, in page 2, line 10, at end insert
'provided that such consent was given at a time when all relevant parties have had a fair opportunity to obtain competent independent advice'.

Mr. Garnier: Amendment No. 16 adds a safety mechanism to employment tribunal proceedings, especially where the regulations, as amended, allow for disputes to be resolved or determined without any hearing.
I invite the House to consider clause 2, which refers to
section 7 of the Employment Tribunals Act 1996 (which authorises the making of employment tribunal procedure regulations)".
Clause 2 allows an insertion into that Act in these terms:
(3A) Employment tribunal procedure regulations may authorise the determination of proceedings without any hearing (and in private) where the parties have given their written consent (whether or not they have subsequently withdrawn it).
I fully understand the need for speed in the delivery of justice in certain circumstances. There are some cases where a good dose of adversarial justice is required to get to the nub of the dispute, whether it is a dispute of law or of fact. We see that in magistrates courts day in, day out, where motoring cases are often dealt with without a full hearing. Indeed, the Magistrates' Courts (Procedure) Bill, which has completed its Committee stage upstairs and is due for Report here, I dare say a little after Easter, is another example of where a much speedier version of events can be arrived at without any detraction from the justice required in any given motoring case.
This Bill authorises the determination of proceedings without any hearing. I have a little concern, which amendment No. 16 may alleviate, about the words "and in private" because justice, if it is to be done—I can see my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) groaning at the use of yet another cliché—must be seen to be done. The words "and in private" would cause me even more concern if my amendment were not allowed into subsection (3A).
The subsection continues:
where the parties have given their written consent (whether or not they have subsequently withdrawn it).
The words in parenthesis again underline the need for the amendment. It is one thing to do away with the need for a hearing; it is another to have the proceedings held in private. It is one thing to allow parties to give their written consent to the disposal of the matter without a hearing and in private, but quite another for disadvantaged, possibly not very well educated, people to have their claim decided in private, without the benefit of competent independent advice.
The House has, I hope, noticed that, although I speak as a lawyer, I do not require the words "competent and independent legal advice" or "independent legal advice" to be entered into the Bill. What is important is that the person making the claim can obtain competent independent advice.
Many of the cases that have come before industrial tribunals and will come before the new employment tribunals have and will be brought by individual employees without the assistance of a trade union. I know that the Minister is a doughty supporter of trade unions and their rights and the way they have assisted employees. There is a place for trade unions and they have played a valuable part in the history of the 20th century and the economic growth of this country. However, not everybody, for reasons good and bad, has the benefit of trade union advice and representation.
Such hearings involve both sides of the employment divide. I do not mean to be controversial by using that phrase; perhaps I should talk of both sides of the

employment table. Employment in my constituency is predominantly provided by small family companies with annual turnovers well under £1 million—under £100,000 in many cases—not by one huge international company. Small family employers do not necessarily have the time, money or resources to employ a firm of solicitors, whether in Leicester, London or one of the conurbations convenient to my east Midlands constituency.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Paterson), in his remarks on new clause 9, highlighted examples of individual employers who feel that they have been placed over a barrel by the way the system is stacked against them. I seek to protect those employers—and the employees I mentioned earlier—from being railroaded into a result with which they feel no connection. Unless people are able to give informed consent, in this as in many other areas of dispute, it will be difficult for the public to be satisfied with the legislation we have provided and the way in which the tribunal system works.
I urge the House to consider carefully the need for independent and competent advice. The genesis of the Bill stems from the work of the previous President of the Board of Trade, now Lord Lang, and the consultation process that accompanied his draft Bill in 1996. That consultation produced some interesting conclusions, and I am grateful to the Library staff for their assistance in my research.
The consultation document published in July 1996 explained that the aim of the proposal was to streamline the procedures by allowing the chairman to determine a case on the basis of written evidence and without a hearing. The consent of both parties would be required. The parties could opt for that procedure or the tribunal could of its own volition ask the parties whether they agreed that their case could be determined on written advice alone.
Some 67 responses were received in favour of the proposal and only 33 against. Importantly, 101 of those responding failed to express a view. That underscores my point that parties in proceedings need competent independent advice. If people are not prepared, when they are handed a consultation paper, to express a view about whether a dispute should be handled without a proper hearing, that highlights the need for independent advice to be available. Obviously, if advice is available but people do not take it, that is their hard luck. The Bill should ensure that advice is available to those who are invited to attend the hearing.

Mr. James Gray: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that—for two reasons—the Minister was being particularly unfair when he attacked the previous Administration for not turning the consultation paper into legislation? The first reason is that the consultation period was last autumn, after the Queen's Speech, so it would not have been possible to introduce legislation based on the consultation paper before the fast approaching general election. The second reason is that the new Government also have not included such legislation in a Queen's Speech. We are debating a private Member's Bill.

Mr. Garnier: I take those points, but the Minister is incapable of malice and I would not wish to cast more aspersions on him.

Mr. Clifton-Brown: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that legislation passed by the House should be clear and unambiguous? Does he agree that the proposed new subsection (3A)—
(whether or not they have subsequently withdrawn it)"—
is ambiguous, as it can be read both ways? Does he agree that amendment No. 14 should be passed because most small firms in particular come up against this type of employment legislation only once in a blue moon? Both parties should have access to properly qualified advice.

Mr. Garnier: I think that I understand my hon. Friend's point. I have tabled my amendment because the wording in brackets is not ambiguous. I want the clause to be amended to provide greater assistance to those who do not have advice but who should have it. I think that I have made that point, and making a good point several times does not improve it.

Mr. Lansley: I should like briefly to speak to amendment No. 3, which touches on the point that has just been made on clause 2. The wording in brackets—
(whether or not they have subsequently withdrawn it)"—
would enable the tribunal to proceed on the basis of written submissions without a hearing, even if one party subsequently concluded that that would not be in its interest. I have tabled amendment No. 3 specifically—only—to protect people in those circumstances.
I acknowledge that there is a danger that people might vexatiously withdraw consent only to prolong proceedings or to incur additional costs. Nevertheless, one can conceive of circumstances in which parties to proceedings, particularly—as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) clearly explained—parties that are at a disadvantage against a well-financed employer who has produced very good evidence. I think that all hon. Members will acknowledge that there are circumstances in which an employee, in particular, may be far better able to expand a case in person—orally, and in cross-examination—than in written proceedings.
If amendment No. 14 is not accepted, we should leave that small opportunity for people to withdraw their consent to proceeding on the basis of written evidence alone—to give them their day in court.

Mr. Healey: It was remiss of me earlier not to welcome the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) to the Opposition Front Bench. I enjoyed his distinctive speech, and welcomed his confirmation of the Conservative party's backing for the Bill.
This group of amendments deals with the power provided in clause 2 for tribunals to determine a case, when both parties agree, on the basis of written evidence alone and in private. All three amendments are unacceptable. If they were accepted, they would waste the time of both the tribunal and the parties to the tribunal.
Amendment No. 14 would not prevent determinations based on written evidence, but would merely prevent such determinations being made in private. As such determinations are made according to the papers on the file, there is no need for a public hearing. The proper principle outlined by the hon. and learned Member for

Harborough (Mr. Garnier) that justice must be seen to be done does not come into play in this respect. Amendment No. 14 would be a waste of the tribunal's time.
Amendment No. 3 would enable parties who had given their consent for a written determination in private to withdraw that consent at any stage in the subsequent proceedings. That would unnecessarily waste the time of the tribunal and the other party.
2 pm
Amendment No. 16 touches on a much more important point that was eloquently set out by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough. It seeks to insert a requirement for the parties to have had the opportunity to receive advice before agreeing to such a determination. Although it is important for parties to seek advice at each stage in taking a case to a tribunal, particularly when waiving a right, for instance in seeking a compromise agreement, we cannot reasonably require them to do so before deciding to have their case dealt with in a certain way. Parties are not giving up their right to have their case determined by the tribunal; they are merely choosing to have it dealt with in a particular way.
In conclusion, the amendments do nothing to achieve the aims of the Bill in streamlining the tribunal system of justice or to make it easier for employees and employers to use it.

Mr. Garnier: I was hoping that the Minister might be able to help us out of this difficulty, but he appears to be glued to the Front Bench. It seems that I am not getting the support that I had hoped to get for the amendment, despite its merits. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Healey) for explaining his view on the matter and I fully take the point that the absence of a requirement to take advice, which he clearly does not want in the Bill, does not prevent anyone from doing so. Clearly, anyone who is faced with such a problem ought to seek competent independent advice before taking any decision about his rights.
I am sorry that the House is not with me on this matter, and, as I understand the mathematics of the House of Commons, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 4

HEARINGS BY CHAIRMAN AND ONE OTHER MEMBER

Mr. Lansley: I beg to move amendment No. 2, in page 3, line 46, leave out from 'means' to 'consent' in line 48.
Amendment No. 2 is very straightforward and I shall not detain the House long in explaining its purpose. In circumstances where a tribunal, which normally consists of a chairman and two lay members, is reduced to two members—the chairman and one lay member—by virtue of the failure to attend on the part of one lay member, for example, the amendment would prevent the proceedings going ahead, save with the consent of both parties. That would include circumstances in which one of the parties was not present at the hearing.
Whether or not the parties to a hearing are present, they will have consented or presented evidence to a hearing with legitimate expectations about the character of that


hearing. It may be, for example, that an employee is assuming that the tribunal will consist of two lay members, one of whom may have a trade union background. If that trade union person fails to attend, the legitimate expectations of the employee, whether or not he or she is present, will have been frustrated. Under those circumstances, the amendment would provide that the proceedings could not go ahead. Of course, if both parties are there and give their consent, the tribunal could proceed as intended.

Mr. Ian McCartney: Those who serve on tribunals are not there to represent employer or employee interests. The two lay members are independent and are appointed for their skills. The chairman always has a legal standing. They do not represent employers or trade unions. The tribunal is there to hear the facts and make a determination on them.

Mr. Lansley: I am grateful to the Minister for that. I presume that when a hearing is constituted, those attending will be aware of the background of the members appointed to the tribunal and will have legitimate expectations because of that.

Mr. McCartney: I hope that that is not the case. If people whom we appointed were acting in a partisan way, I would consider it unacceptable conduct. We do not want people to act in a partisan way. We want them act independently and make judgments on the basis of fact.

Mr. Lansley: I understand the Minister's point, but I hope that he accepts that—as we debated on the National Minimum Wage Bill in relation to a chairman sitting alone—there are legitimate expectations about the character of a tribunal and the background of its members. The legally qualified chairman should sit with two wing members who bring a range of expertise. That is how tribunals are constructed. If one of those members is not there, whatever their background, the expectations on the spread of experience available may be frustrated. If the parties are prepared to consent to that, they should be able to proceed. However, if a party is not there and there were expectations about the structure of the tribunal, it would be wrong for the tribunal to proceed.

Mr. Patrick Nicholls: There is a problem. Initially, it sounds fine to say that if both parties consent, the tribunal can go ahead. However, bearing in mind the costs that may have already been incurred, there could be considerable pressure. Both parties may apparently consent to the tribunal going ahead in a truncated form, but that could be a difficult judgment, perhaps made with some misgiving, mindful of the costs that would otherwise be incurred.

Mr. Lansley: I understand my hon. Friend's point. If the parties are there, they have to balance those considerations. They may feel under pressure of costs. If they are not there—this is where the amendment would be particularly relevant—they are not in a position to weigh up the consequences of the failure of one member of the tribunal to attend. Tribunals may take a long time. Considerable resources may be at stake. The establishment

of the tribunal and its balance between the legally qualified chairman and the lay members can be significant in such circumstances. I commend the amendment.

Mr. Steen: I hope that the Labour party is not programmed to reject all the amendments and new clauses tabled by the Conservatives. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) has made a serious point. I hope that it can be squeezed in without too much fuss. I hope that it will be seriously considered and not just rejected out of hand.

Mr. Healey: The purpose of clause 4 is to deal with a particular circumstance that may arise from time to time. Tribunal proceedings may currently be heard in the absence of one lay member—for example, if they are ill—but only if all the parties agree. All those parties must agree, regardless of whether they are present.
If a tribunal is scheduled to proceed and one of the parties has said that they do not wish to be present, they must still be consulted on whether they are content for the proceedings to go ahead if one of the lay members is unable to attend because they are ill or have had a crash on the way. It is not always possible to contact the absent party in such circumstances. As a result, hearings have to be postponed, rescheduled and listed for another day. The amendment would negate the entire change proposed in clause 4. Indeed, it would have been clearer if the amendment had said, "Delete clause 4", because that is its effect.
Clause 4 was a response to a request by tribunal chairmen in England, Wales and Scotland during the 1994 round of consultation. It was then overwhelmingly supported by respondents to consultation on the draft Bill. Clause 4 will lead to a swifter resolution in a few cases, and to that extent it is worth having. I urge Conservative Members to withdraw amendment No. 2.

Mr. Lansley: I have neither support from the Government Front Bench nor from the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Healey), the Bill's promoter. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 5

LEGAL OFFICES

Mr. Leigh: I beg to move amendment No. 18, in page 4, line 19, at end insert—
'(6D) In this section a "legal officer" means—

(a) as respects England and Wales, a barrister of not less than two years call (whether in practice as such or employed to give legal advice), a solicitor admitted for not less than two years who holds a practising certificate, or a person other than a barrister or solicitor who is an authorised advocate or authorised litigator (within the meaning of the Courts and Legal Services Act 1990)
(b) as respects Scotland, an advocate of more than two years standing (whether in practice as such or employed to give legal advice), or a solicitor of more than two years standing who holds a practising certificate.'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 24, in schedule 1, page 14, line 41, after 'barrister', insert
'of not less than two years call'.
No. 25, in page 14, line 42, after 'solicitor', insert
'admitted for not less than two years'.
No. 26, in page 14, line 46, after 'advocate', insert
'of more than two years standing'.
No. 27, in page 14, line 47, after 'solicitor', insert
'of more than two years standing'.
No. 28, in page 15, line 39, after 'barrister', insert
'of not less than two years call'.
No. 29, in page 15, line 40, after 'solicitor', insert
'admitted for not less than two years'.
No. 30, in page 15, line 44, after 'advocate', insert
'of more than two years standing'.
No. 31, in page 15, line 45, after 'solicitor', insert
'of more than two years standing'.
No. 32, in page 17, line 16, after 'barrister', insert
'of not less than two years call'.
No. 33, in page 17, line 17, after 'solicitor', insert
'admitted for not less than two years'.
No. 34, in page 17, line 21, after 'advocate' insert
'of more than two years standing'.
No. 35, in page 17, line 22, after 'solicitor' insert
'of more than two years standing'.
No. 36, in page 18, line 14, after 'barrister', insert
'of not less than two years call'.
No. 37, in page 18, line 15, after 'solicitor', insert
'admitted for not less than two years'.
No. 38, in page 18, line 19, after 'advocate', insert
of more than two years standing'.
No. 39, in page 18, line 20, after 'solicitor' insert
'of more than two years standing'.
No. 40, in page 20, line 49, after 'barrister', insert
of not less than two years call'.
No. 41, in page 20, line 50, after 'solicitor', insert
'admitted for not less than two years'.
No. 42, in page 21, line 3, after 'advocate', insert
'of more than two years standing'.
No. 43, in page 21, line 4, after 'solicitor', insert
'of more than two years standing'.

Mr. Leigh: I have been asked to speak to this group of amendments. They are very clear and I hope that the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Healey) will think that they are useful additions to the Bill. All that they seek to do is ensure that the legal officer is someone of appropriate standing and experience—because his duties will be very onerous.
The Bill specifies that a legal officer can be appointed to relieve chairmen of some of their duties. The introduction of the concept of a legal officer has long been

envisaged by those who wanted to promote the Bill—indeed, by the previous Government, whose consultation paper in July 1996 said:
The aim of the proposals is to relieve tribunal chairmen, particularly in the large offices, of some of the interlocutory duties they currently are required to fulfil by appointing 'legal officers'.
The duties that will have to be undertaken by the legal officer are very wide ranging. They could include granting postponements, making witness orders and carrying out pre-hearing reviews. As a practising barrister, I can say that such pre-hearing reviews are becoming increasingly important. It will therefore be immediately apparent to the House that the duties of legal officers will be very heavy.

Mr. Garnier: Is it of help to my hon. Friend to put to him the similarity of the work that it is proposed will be done by legal officers with that already done by district judges and Queen's Bench and Chancery Division masters in litigation with which he and I will be very familiar?

Mr. Leigh: My hon. and learned Friend makes a very interesting point. Only this year, I was engaged not in civil proceedings but in criminal proceedings, where pre-trial reviews were very onerous and difficult as they appertained to a long fraud trial. Such matters really have to be considered by a very experienced judge. That shows some of the problems. Although the proposals concern interlocutory proceedings, pre-hearing reviews could deal with quite complex matters. Therefore, the duties that we are placing on a legal officer are very important.
Notwithstanding that, consultation took place. Of the respondents, 49 were in favour of appointing legal officers, 19 were against and 133 expressed no view. Like my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier), who was at the time referring to a previous group of amendments, I am rather worried that 133 expressed no view. One assumes that those who take an interest in these matters have come down in favour of the appointment of legal officers.
The trouble is: are we absolutely convinced that legal officers will have the necessary experience? Will they be of appropriate standing? Addressing such questions is the purpose of the amendments.

Mr. Nicholls: If I have understood the purpose correctly, the legal officer will not simply be appointed by qualification, because of the point about time spent. Also incorporated is the possibility of authorised advocates and authorised litigators, which is perhaps a concept with which many people outside the House will not be immediately familiar.

Mr. Leigh: I am very glad that my hon. Friend has made that point. That is why the amendments are so appropriate. Amendment No. 18 says that a legal officer in England and Wales should be
a barrister of not less than two years call (whether in practice as such or employed to give legal advice)",
or
a solicitor admitted for not less than two years who holds a practising certificate".
It seems to me that this is an entirely proper amendment.
If a barrister has two years' call, we might assume that he has the necessary experience to undertake this sort of work. The House may not be familiar with the way in which barristers are trained. One can become a barrister before having any practical experience of court work, providing written advice or anything else. Indeed, there are some barristers in the House—distinguished Members of Parliament—who have never pleaded in the courts and have no direct practical experience of legal work. Therefore, if we are to appoint legal officers to carry out these onerous duties, it is entirely sensible to stipulate that they have the basic experience of two years' call.
I hope that the hon. Member for Wentworth, when he stops walking around the Chamber seeking advice, will accept what I have said. I commend the amendments to the House.

Mr. Ian McCartney: The amendment raises an important point and I want to respond in a positive way. It is right that the legal officers are fully able to carry out the important responsibilities that will be assigned to them. My officials are considering this carefully and will consult those with an interest, most important, the presidents of the industrial tribunals. We gave an undertaking in the other place to do that, and I reaffirm that now.
The concept of legal officers is new, so it is important that it is tested to see whether it is feasible. In order to do that, a pilot scheme is being prepared. It would entirely defeat the object of that scheme if matters such as qualifications, tasks, and so on were set out in primary legislation at this stage. It is also unnecessary, because matters relating to tribunals are set out in the regulations dealing with their constitution. Legal officers will not be able to carry out pre-hearing reviews or determine proceedings, except where a case has been withdrawn or settled.
I hope that I have reassured the House that we intend to deal with these matters in a competent, effective way—through consultation, by piloting and, having learnt from the piloting, by bringing in appropriate schemes. By "appropriate", I mean subject to consultation. The whole purpose of the Bill is to ensure that the partners in the case consent to the process. It is important to handle the matter carefully.
As there was a good deal of support for the principle of the Bill during consultation, and as it is our intention to move forward in a careful and measured way, I hope that the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) will withdraw the amendment. His points were genuine and effective, but we have already considered them and our proposals should therefore satisfy him.

Mr. Lansley: I understand that there are some lawyers with employment expertise who, because they do not require rights of audience in court, are not authorised advocates or litigators. Is it intended to include that sort of employment law specialist?

Mr. McCartney: Given the time, I will write to the hon. Gentleman fully setting out our intentions.

Mr. Leigh: I am grateful for what the Minister has said. He responded helpfully and positively to the amendments and the purport of them. I am delighted that

he intends to undertake further consultation and that it is not envisaged that the legal officers to whom I referred will carry out pre-hearing reviews. In those circumstances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Order for Third Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.—[Mr. Healey.]

Mr. Lansley: I will not take up a great deal of time, but, having moved a new clause and tabled a number of amendments for Report stage, I want to take the opportunity to extend a general welcome to the principle of the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen), who spoke eloquently to the new clause—rather more eloquently than I did earlier—gave the Bill a general welcome from Conservative Members.
The Bill was very much the product of lengthy consultation and it would be remiss of the Minister to chide the previous Government for failing to bring in the Bill. We proceeded with the Bill through means of exhaustive consultation—rightly so, given that it relates to the administration of justice and, therefore, has to command the utmost confidence of the parties involved.
There is also a slight sense that we wish that we had not arrived at this point. Tribunals were initially established to offer a speedy, effective and cheaper route of justice than that provided by the courts. Yet we have alternative disputes resolutions and mechanisms because parties to the dispute can perceive the tribunals procedure as being relatively expensive.
Notwithstanding the fact that delays in tribunals are less now than when the Bill was conceived, a considerable volume of business passes through them.

Mr. Steen: I hope that my hon. Friend will comment on another point. The Government are creating increasing amounts of legislation that will result in industrial tribunals being even more blocked. Also, there is more legislation coming from Europe, which will create another blockage. Does my hon. Friend agree that, for those reasons, the Bill is necessary?

Mr. Lansley: My hon. Friend knows well that the Bill was contemplated by the previous Government as a way of dealing with the considerable and growing volume of business passing through industrial tribunals at that time. It was not contemplated to deal with the additional cases that will be brought before employment tribunals as a result of the national minimum wage legislation. However, it would not be wrong to expect that that legislation will bring additional business before the tribunals, so everything that can be done to ease progress should be done.
My hon. Friend rightly said that the Bill should also try to buttress internal appeals procedures wherever possible within companies. Some amendments have been tabled on that subject, but time has not permitted us to debate them in detail. Parties should seek, wherever possible, to deal with their disputes through internal company procedures. Where that is not possible, it must be in the interests of the companies and the participants to deal with disputes through compromise agreements. We have a useful


measure that allows more compromise agreements to be entered into, using not just legal advice, but wider advice and arbitration procedures.
The Government have largely followed the path set down in previous consultation and in the document published in July 1996 by Lord Lang, the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. One omission is that the Government have chosen not to use private arbitration schemes in addition to those arranged through ACAS, which is a pity. I acknowledge that, if they wish, the parties to a dispute can go to arbitration. However, the parties entering into private arbitration cannot, as I understand it—I stand to be corrected by the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Healey) and the Minister, who understand such matters better than I do—do so in ways that take advantage of powers contained in the legislation. One such power involves setting aside an appeal against that arbitration. The legislation circumscribes the circumstances in which parties are likely to use arbitration. I think that both parties will probably find it risky to use arbitration, except through the procedures devised by ACAS. That is not to say that ACAS itself is the arbitrator or that ACAS will not necessarily be using some of those people who are best qualified to undertake such arbitrations. They may not necessarily be legally qualified, but they could come from a range of people with appropriate experience—from the workplace, trade unions, personnel, management or wherever. None the less, they will do so in the context of a scheme established by ACAS rather than one that is established by bodies other than ACAS. It is in the nature of the private route for resolution procedures that bodies other than ACAS may be able to devise cheaper, less bureaucratic, more accessible and altogether more user-friendly routes to arbitration.
It would have been within the spirit of the way in which the measure has been brought about—essentially on an all-party basis—if the Government had proceeded on the basis of the consultation that took place before the election, rather than resting on the bureaucratic body that they know best. That is not to decry or diminish the role of ACAS, which I accept has an established role in collective disputes, though less so in individual disputes. It may well be that, by using pilot procedures and permissive legislation, it would have been possible for private schemes to be established, which would have worked effectively and might have built up rising confidence on the part of the parties that, unfortunately, enter into disputes.
Notwithstanding that criticism, I take the opportunity on Third Reading to welcome the Bill and to offer congratulations to the hon. Member for Wentworth on steering it through the House. He has done so with a wealth of expertise and experience, which is practical, pragmatic and, it is to be hoped, proved in the event.

Mr. Gray: I add my voice to those of my right hon. and hon. Friends in offering congratulations to the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Healey) on having the sound good sense to introduce the Bill and pilot it through its various stages in the House. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman also on having the sound good sense to take up a proposal that was first thought up by the Conservative

Administration, which ended on 1 May 1997. It was the brainchild of the then President of the Board of Trade, Ian Lang. I am sure that he deeply regrets that, because the consultation procedure took place in the autumn of last year, he was not able to introduce a Bill to enact the proposals on which he had consulted.
It was slightly ungracious of the Minister to upbraid the Conservative party for not having introduced the proposals set out in the Bill into law; the Labour party has equally failed to do so. There has been a Queen's speech following the election of the Labour party into government, yet it failed to include the proposals in that programme. As I have said, I congratulate the hon. Member for Wentworth. I hope that he will be successful in introducing the Bill.

Mr. James Paice: My hon. Friend will know that the previous President of the Board of Trade produced a general consultation paper and a draft Bill. Does he agree that it is a great tribute to Ian Lang that he introduced a draft Bill, because it gave an opportunity for everybody involved to consider the rights and wrongs of the proposals and to get future legislation right? The Bill is slightly different from the draft Bill. That draft Bill gives the lie to the Government's suggestion that, by introducing draft Bills, they are developing a new policy. We have already seen draft Bills.

Mr. Gray: My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Conservative party conceived the notion of introducing draft Bills. It is slightly irritating or upsetting to hear the new Government crowing about how clever and democratic they are being in introducing such Bills. I welcome the fact that the previous President of the Board of Trade introduced a draft Bill.
The Opposition broadly support the main thrust of the Bill. However, the hon. Member for Wentworth and the Minister will have heard valid and important concerns expressed by us during our debates. We naturally massively support the notion of industrial tribunals. I understand that there have been 1 million hearings and 30,000 cases so far. They have been a significant and accessible route for settling industrial disputes.
We are wholly supportive of industrial tribunals and the main thrust of the Bill. We are concerned that they became clogged up towards the end of the previous Parliament because of the volume of cases that were brought before them. Therefore, any means that can be found to make them more efficient; that allow more cases to be heard; and allow the rights and worries of employees and employers to be heard is important. I am glad that my right hon. and hon. Friends support the main thrust of the Bill.
There are two or three areas of particular concern, which we have raised during the debate. They concern—

It being half-past Two o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed on Friday 27 March.

Remaining Private Members' Bills

FIREWORKS BILL

As amended in the Standing Committee, considered; read the Third time and passed.

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES (BEER AND CIDER) BILL

Order read for consideration (not amended in the Standing Committee).

Hon. Members: Object.

To be considered on Friday 24 April.

LOCAL AUTHORITY TENDERS BILL

Order read for consideration (as amended in the Standing Committee).

Hon. Members: Object.

To be considered on Friday 27 March.

PRIVATE HIRE VEHICLES (LONDON) BILL

Order read for consideration in Committee.

Hon. Members: Object.

Dr. Jenny Tonge: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I do not understand how it can be possible that such an important measure that affects the safety of women and elderly people in this city can be delayed by a single hon. Member who has not taken any interest before now—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): Order. These are not matters for debate today. We are carrying out the procedures in the normal way.

Committee deferred till Friday 27 March.

GENEVA CONVENTIONS (AMENDMENT) BILL [LORDS]

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Not moved.

Dr. Tonge: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am sorry; we have moved on.

BRITISH NATIONALITY (ST HELENA) BILL [LORDS]

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Not moved.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (EXPERIMENTAL ARRANGEMENTS) BILL [LORDS]

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 24 April.

WATER CHARGES (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Not moved.

ELECTIONS (VISUALLY IMPAIRED VOTERS) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Not moved.

CHRONICALLY SICK AND DISABLED PERSONS (AMENDMENT) BILL [LORDS]

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Not moved.

COMPANIES (MILLENNIUM COMPUTER COMPLIANCE) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 27 March.

REFORM OF QUARANTINE REGULATIONS BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 27 March.

PROHIBITION OF BULL BARS BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Not moved.

VOLUNTARY PERSONAL SECURITY CARDS BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 27 March.

HOUSING SERVICE CHARGES (AMENDMENT) (No. 2) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 3 July.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: For the convenience of the House, we will take motions Nos. 18 and 19 together.

OFFICE COSTS ETC. ALLOWANCES

Resolved,
That, in the opinion of this House, the following provisions should have effect—

(1) The limit on the office costs allowance in relation to Miss Anne Begg should be 1.33 times that determined in accordance with paragraph (1) of Part A of the Resolution of the House of 13th July 1994 for any quarter beginning with 1st January 1998;
(2) The limit on the additional costs allowance in relation to Miss Anne Begg should be 1.33 times that determined in accordance with paragraph (1) of Part C of the Resolution of the House of 13th July 1994 for any year beginning with 1st April 1997;
(3) The limit on the Members' staff travel in relation to Miss Anne Begg should be thirty four return journeys determined in accordance with paragraph (f) of the Resolution of the House of 19th July 1983 in the period of 12 months beginning with 1st January 1998.

BICYCLE ALLOWANCE

Resolved,
That, in the opinion of this House, the following provision should be made for the payment of a bicycle allowance to honourable Members in respect of journeys which they have undertaken by bicycle while on Parliamentary duties within the United Kingdom—

(1) In respect of journeys commenced in the year starting with 1st April 1998, the allowance shall be paid at a rate of 6.2 pence per mile increased by the percentage (if any) by which the retail prices index for March 1998 has increased compared with the index for March 1997.
(2) For each subsequent year starting with 1st April, the rate shall be increased by the percentage (if any) by which the retail prices index for the previous March has increased compared with the index for the March before that.
(3) The rate shall be calculated to the nearest tenth of a penny (with exactly one twentieth being rounded up).
(4) Arrangements shall be made by the Fees Office for ensuring that claims are supported by appropriate particulars.
(5) In this Resolution 'the retail price index' means the general index of retail prices (for all items) published by the Office for National Statistics (or any index or figures published by that Office in place of that index).—[Mr. Dowd.]

WELSH LANGUAGE IN PARLIAMENTARY PROCEEDINGS IN WALES

Resolved,
That this House approves the First Report from the Procedure Committee on use of the Welsh language in Parliamentary Proceedings in Wales, Session 1997–98 (HC 461).—[Mr. Dowd.]

SCOTTISH GRAND COMMITTEE

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order 100(1) (Scottish Grand Committee (sittings)),
That the Scottish Grand Committee shall meet on Tuesday 7th April at half-past Ten o'clock at Westminster to consider a substantive Motion for the adjournment of the Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 100 (1)(e) (Scottish Grand Committee (sittings))—[Mr. Dowd.]

Question agreed to.

ADJOURNMENT (EASTER)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 25 (Periodic adjournments),
That this House, at its rising on Wednesday 8th April, do adjourn till Monday 20th April.—[Mr. Dowd.]

Question agreed to.

Hospitals (East Kent)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Dowd.]

Mr. Julian Brazier: I am most grateful for the opportunity to hold this Adjournment debate on the future of the Kent and Canterbury and the Whitstable and Tankerton hospitals. I am grateful to the Minister for Public Health, who has had to come, at the end of a long, hard week, to an empty Chamber to reply to the debate.
As I speak, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) is on his way to the Kent and Canterbury hospital to hear its plans for reconfiguring the services in east Kent. I am grateful for the expression of concern from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) and to the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Prosser), who was visiting Buckland hospital in his constituency this morning. He has sent me a courteous note in which he expresses concern about the future of the Kent and Canterbury.
There is extreme concern. Since the middle of December, I have received well over 2,000 letters from constituents. There were no standard letters; they were each individually written. Many of them gave testimony of lives saved and conditions healed at these two splendid hospitals. I have also received literally hundreds of letters that I have had to redirect to neighbouring Members of Parliament.
Although it would be out of order for me to make any reference to the Public Gallery, the fact that many hundreds of people from many different communities in east Kent and all political parties have taken the trouble to come up to London today is a sign of the level of support for these two fine hospitals.
The new document produced by the Kent and Canterbury hospital, entitled "Tomorrow's Health Care for East Kent: A New Direction", offers hope in what was an extremely dark situation. Before I outline my reasons for supporting this exciting new proposal, I want to touch briefly on the four principal reasons why the Kent and Canterbury is critical for health care in east Kent as a whole. I do not intend to make, and I never have made, any narrow constituency points about employment or other local issues. I argue solely that the hospital is vital to acute health care in east Kent as a whole. I shall make some brief remarks later about the Whitstable and Tankerton hospital, which is also extremely important on the community side.
The first of my four reasons is the critical importance of east Kent's five regional specialties—cancer, renal, neonatal intensive care, haemophilia and neurophysiology. All five are based at the Kent and Canterbury, and their move would involve breaking up recognised centres of excellence. For example, the cancer unit is one of only three in the country to have received a recent chartermark for excellence.
East Kent health authority has admitted that breaking up the teams involves a considerable risk, but their move from the current site near the middle of east Kent would in all five cases reduce accessibility. In the cases of the cancer and neonatal units, the service would move right out of east Kent. Radiotherapy patients would have to travel all the way to Maidstone for daily treatment.
The second reason is a wider loss of access to a broad range of acute medical services. For many of the people with cars who live in the Canterbury city council area, which on its own has a far larger population than Thanet and extends well beyond my constituency, for the people who live in Faversham and for the tens of thousands of people who live in villages in east Kent, Canterbury, as the hub of the public transport system, is the only accessible acute hospital in east Kent.
It is ironic that some of the strongest representations about the closure of the Kent and Canterbury have come from communities in the Thanet, North and Thanet, South constituencies, such as Herne Bay, Sandwich and Wingham, where some of the best-attended meetings opposing closure have been held. Margate is inaccessible even to the people there, especially those who rely on public transport.
The third argument concerns quality. There is an increasingly tight national and international market in key medical skills. The Kent and Canterbury has every consultant post filled and every junior doctor post accredited for training. Its consultants include several of national distinction. The view of general practitioners is the best measure of quality, and their overwhelming support for the Kent and Canterbury hospital is reflected across many communities by the fact that those representing 240,000 people have given their backing to that hospital.
The fourth reason why the Kent and Canterbury is critical to health care is co-operation. Sadly, Margate hospital faces a recruiting crisis: six consultant posts are unfilled despite the fact that 19 Kent and Canterbury consultants regularly help out there. The recent reorganisation of paediatric services in east Kent has shown that the necessary critical mass for doctor training can be provided if departments in our three acute hospitals operate on three sites, but as one unit. However, if the Kent and Canterbury is removed from the picture, the extreme distance between sites—40 miles along one of the most congested roads in the United Kingdom—would mean that Ashford, on its own, would be unable to support Thanet.
The Kent and Canterbury proposal is positive. I am delighted that it has the backing not only of medical, nursing and support staff at the Kent and Canterbury hospital, but of a huge number of local GPs and a growing number of consultants and other staff at Ashford. The essence of the document's proposal is that all three sites should continue to operate, but on a unified basis under one management structure.
The proposal emphasises that retention of the five core services—acute medicine, acute surgery, accident and emergency services, and maternity and paediatric provision—on all three sites is pivotal. At the same time, financial savings could be made in three key areas: first, through cutting management overheads by amalgamating the three trusts—a cynic would suggest that it is obvious why doctors at Ashford, who realise that the proposal is the right way ahead, and their management, who strongly oppose it, are divided; secondly, by cutting clinical costs by significantly increasing efficiency on individual sites—especially, as the EKHA has noted, at Ashford and at Thanet; and thirdly, by cutting support costs through rationalising certain supporting services, which do not directly interface with patients, on to individual sites at the hospitals.
Two of the most exciting Kent and Canterbury proposals—improvements in education and training, and improvements in research and development—would take advantage of the Kent and Canterbury's proximity to the university. That would add critical mass by allowing continuing activity on all three sites, but under a common, tri-site umbrella.
The package would provide east Kent with a hospital configuration that would attract top-quality staff, continue to offer maximum accessibility to patients, and protect key regional specialties, and would achieve savings on individual overheads and retain the necessary critical mass for doctor training.
This model may help to pave the way for future debates in areas throughout the country where tension is developing between patient accessibility and the continuing demand for more centralisation to deal with doctors' training. I note that three hospitals in Surrey and Sussex are moving towards a similar model. I welcome the re-establishment by the EKHA of a steering committee to examine the proposal in detail. I am particularly pleased about the appointment of Dr. Sue Atkinson as chairman of the clinical co-ordinating group, which will include general practitioners as well as a much wider range of consultants than were involved in the original document. Obviously, much detailed work remains to be done.
Whitstable and Tankerton hospital, which really deserves a debate of its own, was built after the first world war as a memorial to the dead of the area, to care for the living. That excellent community hospital is in an unfortunate position. In December, the EKHA arbitrarily said that it was thinking of closing the hospital. Although that proposal has been removed from the consultation document—rightly, in my view—concern inevitably remains among the staff. The hospital is very popular. It is in the centre of a town that contains many elderly people, a number of whom have no access to public transport. Huge sums have been raised by the league of friends, which means that much of the hospital's building is new.
Let me draw a rather unhappy analogy. In the context of mental health, care in the community has in many ways proved a disaster. The Government are now rightly returning to a residential arrangement—an arrangement which, in many instances, is more expensive than the original provision of beds in the old hospitals. Any proposal to replace community hospitals such as Whitstable and Tankerton with alleged extra provision—care in the community—would, to say the least, have an unhappy provenance. In my view, it would lead to disaster in Whitstable.
There are two drives behind the proposal for Kent and Canterbury, and the possible proposal for Whitstable and Tankerton. There is the need for critical masses in the training of doctors—the need to recruit and train doctors of the best quality—and there is the inevitable shortage of resources. Kent and Canterbury hospital has come up with a proposal that deals with both problems.
The EKHA's original options both involve radical change. One proposal is to close Kent and Canterbury hospital, or run it right down; the other is to do the same in Thanet. Even in principle, those moves would secure only small financial savings, and in practice they would lead to huge costs—hidden costs that are just starting to


emerge, as always happens with radical change. The Kent and Canterbury document, "Tomorrow's Health Care for East Kent", offers the hope of a new direction.

The Minister for Public Health (Ms Tessa Jowell): I congratulate the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) on securing the opportunity to debate a matter of such evident importance to his constituents. He referred to other hon. Members who have represented their constituents' interests in a matter that is obviously important to east Kent. I am grateful to him for doing so, but I want to add the name of my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) who, as the hon. Gentleman may know, took part today in the farewell to Ramsgate hospital.
This is the second occasion in a matter of weeks that we have had an opportunity to debate the review of hospital services in east Kent. That is a testament to the amount of local interest in the review and, more fundamentally, to the commitment of the people of east Kent to securing a high-quality national service for themselves and their families. It is proof that the national health service is as relevant to the lives of people in east Kent and, indeed, the rest of the country as it was when it was established 50 years ago.
The hon. Gentleman spoke about some developments that have taken place during the short time since the House previously debated this matter. Before I touch on them I should like to reiterate some of the key points that were made by my hon. Friend the Minister of State in the previous debate. They provide the context in which hon. Members who represent east Kent will consider the review of hospital services and take account of their constituents' views.
I remind the House that the health authority's proposed reorganisation in east Kent is not financially driven. The Government have already provided extra money for health and social services. In east Kent, we have provided £1.66 million to help alleviate winter pressures that, in the past, have caused suffering and difficulty in local hospitals. We are anxious to relieve those pressures. We have also announced an increase of £5.3 million in real terms for next year.
Even with extra investment, change is needed in east Kent and the review is about the ability to deliver safe and effective care to patients in the district. As the hon. Member for Canterbury said, the relevant factors include the supply of doctors and their training needs and working practices. They are of the essence in delivering high-quality health care. Clinical quality requires a minimum work load, which is important in building up experience. In an acute hospital without a minimum work load, doctors cannot be properly trained, and senior doctors cannot maintain the expertise to ensure the best treatment and care for patients. Money alone cannot resolve those issues.
Since the previous debate on this subject, NHS chief executives and leading doctors have written to all NHS staff in east Kent confirming their acceptance of the need for change. That change is necessary to meet the pressures that face the NHS locally, and it reflects the broader and continuing need for national change. We applaud their

efforts to explain to staff and local people the underlying rationale for change. Those people are undoubtedly anxious about what the future holds for services in the district. We do not for a moment underestimate the anxiety and concern about the prospect of any change for whatever reason.
The second important point about the consultation is that it is an attempt to establish the best way forward in the long term for services in East Kent. The consultation is genuine. I assure the House that no decisions have been taken or can or will be taken until the consultation period ends on 8 May. The debate provides an important opportunity for Ministers to be made aware of the developing concerns and views of hon. Members from east Kent.
At the end of the consultation period it will be the duty of the health authority to take account of the comments that it has received and, in the light of them, to weigh different options. Local accountability is especially important, because the way in which services are run and developed must be in tune with local needs and views, and inspire the confidence of the people who use them. That is why we hope the consultation can proceed in a spirit of consensus and with the objective of delivering a broad consensus about the right way forward. That would be in the spirit of our recently published White Paper about the NHS's future.
Should the final option chosen by the health authority be contested by either of east Kent's community health councils, the final decision will rest with Ministers. If that should happen, Ministers' responses will be fully informed by the health authority's detailed consultation and will be based on a balanced assessment of the proposals, which should themselves reflect the NHS White Paper that made clear that services should be based on integrated care and on partnership between NHS bodies and local agencies, all intended and designed to deliver a better service to patients through improved quality and efficiency.
It is important to offer, and to have the capacity to offer, prompt, high-quality treatment and care that is built around individuals' needs. It is important, too, that the new arrangements provide prompt access to specialist services that are linked to local surgeries, but we must preserve the integrity of consultation. That imposes a real discipline on Ministers.
At this stage, the discipline must be to listen rather than to comment on any of the proposals that are the subject of consultation, but I assure the House—I hope that hon. Members will make this absolutely clear to their constituents—that no decisions have been taken by Ministers, no minds have been made up and no commitments have been given. However, the need for change is, as I have said, recognised by all parts of the NHS. Of course, when consultation comes to an end in the next few months, it will be the time for discussion and debate to stop, for decisions to be made and for the East Kent authority to work together to implement the decisions, putting the uncertainty of the review behind it.
The hon. Member for Canterbury referred to the role of Whitstable and Tankerton hospital. I should like to make it clear that the services provided by community hospitals form a vital part of the comprehensive network of NHS care but that their future does not form part of this current consultation.
As the consultation document makes clear, the future of individual community hospitals will be the subject of separate detailed discussions with local general practitioners and local communities. Those discussions will also help future primary care groups to focus their attention on the role that community hospitals play in improving the health of their local populations.
I understand that the health authority has established an elderly strategic planning group with representatives from primary and secondary care sectors and social services that will help to mastermind strategic development of community services. We welcome that. I understand that the community trust has also established local groups to review in detail the operational implications on local services in Faversham, Whitstable and Tankerton.
East Kent health authority has also emphasised that the aim of any change is to provide the best quality care in the right surroundings, that patients will not be transferred inappropriately to nursing homes and that beds will not be closed until new services are available and are shown to be working effectively, which is extremely important in underpinning the contract of trust between local health services and the local community.
If proposals emerge that constitute a substantial change to service provision, of course that would require public consultation. The health authority has given, and we expect it to meet, that commitment.
The hon. Member for Canterbury also referred to concerns about care in the community and mental health. We agree that the shift from institutional care to care in the community has failed to deliver the necessary levels of support in a number of areas. That is a cause for concern. Public confidence in the policy and its implementation by the previous Administration is low, but we can have no return to the grim Victorian asylums that never were community hospitals.

Mr. Brazier: At this very moment, admissions to the Kent and Canterbury hospital are having to be restricted, and the Whitstable and Tankerton hospital is full. I am relieved to hear the Minister say that, before we let go of any beds, acute or community, the Government will make certain that we have enough beds.

Ms Jowell: That assurance is an important part of building public confidence in change. People become ill and need care day by day and it is important that treatment is available, regardless of the point reached in the cycle of change.
I come now to the major issue raised by the hon. Member for Canterbury—the proposals set out in "Tomorrow's Health Care" by the steering group. The steering group's purpose was to ensure that a joint mechanism existed to assess alternative proposals to the

authority's preferred option. Things have moved on. Doctors from Kent and Canterbury have developed an alternative option, set out in a companion document—and it should be seen as such—called "Tomorrow's Health Care for Kent: A New Direction". Their proposal is to retain in-patient services at Margate, Ashford and Canterbury. I commend the doctors at Kent and Canterbury for the spirit in which they have put forward their option. Papers recently presented to the "Tomorrow's Health Care" steering group committed it to further exploration of the option. That exercise will be conducted thoroughly.
I understand that a co-ordinating group of leading doctors from all the trusts in East Kent, under the chairmanship of the regional director of public health, will ask doctors—both specialists and general practitioners—from across East Kent to consider this proposal in the light of the other proposals on which consultation is taking place. The intention is that the "Tomorrow's Health Care" steering group will consider the results of that work in about six weeks.
It would be wrong to speculate about the future. However, it is important that hon. Members have the opportunity to debate those important proposals and their consequences for their constituents. Representing the interests and concerns of their constituents is one of the most important tasks that face hon. Members, and the hon. Member for Canterbury has responded actively to the proposed reorganisation of health care for his constituents. Whatever happens in the House, the important debate will take place locally.
I am confident that every opportunity has been extended to local people to take part in local meetings and lobby Members of Parliament to ensure that, when the decisions are taken, nobody is in any doubt about the strength and balance of local feeling. We will ensure that the NHS executive continues to work closely with the NHS in east Kent to protect the interests of patients, to put them first and to build together, based on a true understanding of the issues that face the NHS locally.
We are determined to ensure that the result of the consultation is high-quality treatment offering high-quality care to the people in the district so that they have a health service fit for the 21st century. I know that local trusts and the health authority share that commitment. I assure the hon. Member for Canterbury that Ministers will do everything they can to ensure that interested parties work constructively together to find the best way forward that inspires local confidence.

The motion having been made after half-past Two o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at four minutes past Three o'clock.